Steve’s Blog

The Village Blacksmith

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - 1807-1882

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
     The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
     With large and sinewy hands,
And the muscles of his brawny arms
     Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long;
     His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
     He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
     For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
     You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
     With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
     When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
     Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
     And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
     Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,
     And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
     He hears his daughter's voice
Singing in the village choir,
     And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother's voice
     Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
     How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
     A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing,
     Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
     Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
     Has earned a night's repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
     For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
     Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
     Each burning deed and thought.

27/04/2022: I would probably prefer a .410 shotgun-cane myself but this might do in a pinch: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BYDC5ZL/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B07BYDC5ZL&linkCode=as2&tag=helentag-20&linkId=b539432b77c44daace90749f71b7208d

27/04/2022:

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27/04/2022: Understanding the importance of coal: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/04/rafe-champion-guest-post-tasmania-burning-oil-in-prolonged-wind-drought/

27/04/2022: How long before all of us live this long: https://www.npr.org/2022/04/25/1094630648/the-worlds-oldest-person-japans-kane-tanaka-dies-at-age-119

26/04/2022: After twenty years and many billions on ‘immortality research’ we are still dying: https://bigthink.com/health/immortality-race-to-live-forever/

26/04/2022: Let’s talk about the immense benefits (to life on earth) of increased CO2: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/04/23/increased-plant-productivity-the-first-key-benefit-of-atmospheric-co2-enrichment/

26/04/2022: I agree with Rowan Dean, “When asked what people wanted of their leaders at the next election, overwhelmingly the answer was ‘to be left alone’” : https://newcatallaxy.blog/2022/04/23/the-libs-are-only-around-45-socialist-while-labor-is-90/

26/04/2022: “Not a single ‘environmental prediction’ of the last 52 years has come true”. Time we stopped paying any attention to these loonies and just got on with it: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/04/24/earth-days-failed-predictions-of-52-years-ago-the-amazing-environmental-improvements-that-have-occurred-since/

25/04/2022: The CCP certainly does endorse Albanese (as the Lib ‘attack ads’ indicate) and this is because he has always been a communist stooge: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202202/1252207.shtml

25/04/2022: “It turns out that the impact human emissions on the CO₂-concentration is relatively small. In his calculations, only 17 ppm (less than 15%) of the total increase is due to human CO₂. The vast majority of the increase is the result of the increased global temperature” : https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/04/22/why-is-the-co%e2%82%82-concentration-rising/

25/04/2022: Strange bedfellows: Putin’s soldiers celebrate conquest of Mariupol shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’: https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/putins-soldiers-celebrate-conquest-of-mariupol-shouting-allahu-akbar/

25/04/2022: Fighting above our weight – remembering the Battle of Kapyong (71 years ago yesterday): https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/04/the-battle-of-kapyong-when-australia-went-to-war-with-china-and-won-lest-we-forget.html

24/04/2022: Maybe Elon will manage to bring down the Big Tech conspiracy to rule the world: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/twitter-hiding-dont-forget-dr-shivas-mindblowing-lawsuit-big-tech/

24/04/2022: The dragon is no longer sleeping: “The simple, chilling truth is that the CCP is doing everything in its power – mostly via economics, technology, diplomacy, and the media, not yet via military power – to destroy our way of life”: https://richardsonpost.com/robert-spalding/26730/chinas-rules-of-war/

24/04/2022: As if you didn’t know, “Fossil fuels are making Earth a better and better place by providing uniquely low-cost, reliable energy to billions of people”: https://alexepstein.substack.com/p/earth-day-truth-fossil-fuels-make?r=5c3gj&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

24/04/2022: Tetanus vaccines last at least ten years (and up to 60) but the fake covid ‘vaccine’ does not even last two months (and seems to be even doing a lot of harm, possibly more than the disease): https://joannenova.com.au/2022/04/tetanus-vaccines-work-so-well-we-may-not-need-the-ten-year-boosters-only-a-30-year-one/

23/04/2022: Important new information for men: https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2022/04/21/bacteria-prostate-cancer/5541650549768/

23/04/2022: Jennifer has a very sound point about sea level fall here. You only have to open your eyes just about anywhere to see it: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/04/21/washed-away-a-short-film-about-sea-level-fall/

23/04/2022: Electricity prices have doubled. Without coal (or nuclear) we may not be able to afford electricity in the future. These green crazies pushing this insane agenda must be stopped. Build new baseload now: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/04/australian-electricity-price-doubles-ceo-explains-prices-up-due-to-lack-of-coal-power/

23/04/2022: Viv Forbes is totally right – we must win the war against the ‘green slime’ now or be lost forever: https://richardsonpost.com/vivforbes/26698/its-time-for-australia-to-vote-for-change/

Just a ‘for example’: https://www.advanceaustralia.org.au/cost_of_net_zero_500_000_jobs_and_a_massive_hit_to_the_economy

22/04/2022: Sounds very promising: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04-tumors-partially-dont.html

22/04/2022: You don’t say? So, no climate crisis then: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/04/20/2021-state-of-the-climate-report-empirical-observations-show-no-sign-of-climate-crisis-snow-cover-stable-sea-ice-levels-recovering-no-change-in-storm-activity/

Even Greta agrees: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/04/20/a-puppet-slip-of-the-tongue-did-she-really-just-say-that-monday-mirthiness/

22/04/2022: I find this quite sickening – a harbinger of the West moving to adopt China’s nefarious ‘social credit’ system: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/new-social-credit-app-to-reward-italian-citizens-for-virtuous-behavior/

22/04/2022: In Germany the highest inflation since WW2. Seriously unhappy times ahead. The cause is socialism my friends: the green revolution and the weird statist response to covid. The cure will be the same as ever: belt tightening, smaller government etc. Beware politicos promising to shower you with the largesse of ever more large tranches of your own money: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/germanys-inflation-surpasses-30-percent-highest-since-1949/

20/04/2022: I have long noticed that the left seems to want a return to some ‘golden’ past (such as medieval times - or anyway pre-industrial). This Rouseauean ‘noble savage’ nonsense is really quite dangerous. The Agrarian Revolution, industrialization and capitalism has issued in an era of incomparable benefits to mankind: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/the_medieval_era_is_suddenly_calling_out_to_leftists.html

20/04/2022: Canada has stopped having a free press. Watch this catch on everywhere – already in the USA) : https://joannenova.com.au/2022/04/trudeau-invents-license-for-journalists-so-readers-can-spot-fake-news-everyone-with-a-license/ & https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/04/18/usa-and-canadas-plan-to-silence-independent-media/

20/04/2022: Thank goodness someone (Katherine Deves) is willing to stand against transgender nonsense. (and well said Jacinta Price). “Does anyone actually believe that men change into women and women into men who can give birth, that the Earth is burning, the seas are rising, and we’ll all perish unless we cover our faces with strips of cotton?” (David Mamet in American Occupation): https://www.news.com.au/national/federal-election/deserve-to-have-a-voice-controversial-liberal-party-candidate-katherine-deves-finds-support/news-story/06db84bb658225363a96a368fa520939

19/04/2022: Nice bit of gear. I see some civilian uses for them too: https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2022/04/15/pentagon-to-build-nuclear-microreactor-to-power-far-flung-bases/

19/04/2022: The truth is hard to take - “Murray aims to revive what he calls the “American creed,” a set of ideal commitments to foundational freedoms, human dignity, individualism, equality under the law, and the use of neutral, colorblind measures of individual talent and competence to assign economic and social roles. Central to this code, still supported by Americans, is a meritocratic and impartial standard for all…Murray disputes the fashionable assumption that racial discrimination creates social inequities. The reality, says Murray, is that racial inequalities in America between European- and African-heritage people in health, wealth, position, status, and income can be traced to a significant disparity in African Americans’ cognitive ability and criminal behavior”: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/04/charles_murrays_wake_up_call_on_race_problems.html

19/04/2022: Shanghai again. Something very strange is happening here. The Cantonese have always been the soft underbelly of the communist regime. Maybe that’s what’s going on - a harbinger of regime change? You may remember that the Delta variant arose in Botswana allegedly brought there by Chinese diplomats. In any case it seems implausible that since covid arose in China (nearly three years ago) they have successfully locked it down (when no-one else has). Some time ago too there were rumours of a worse virus about in China – let’s hope that’s not what’s happening. Authorities claim it’s just omicron, but if so why the panic? https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/something-rotten-state-shanghais-latest-covid-lockdowns & https://quillette.com/2022/04/18/shanghai-at-the-edge-of-madness/

19/04/2022: George Washington: ‘Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master…Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth…The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments…The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves…’

18/04/2022: Ah Bess, what a great lady you are: “In contrast to the current crop of pygmies we have as world leaders, she is the last remaining island of permanence and stability in our age. She will leave a yawning chasm when she is gone”: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/miranda-devine-queen-elizabeth-ii-a-giant-among-world-leaders/news-story/dff90a02372dc4ccf43848cccafe4030

18/04/2022: Obviously not farm kids: https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2022/04/15/children-farm-animal-same-as-pets/8071650031160/

18/04/2022: Just saying, but I suspect castration (or death) would work better as a deterrent (and be a fairer punishment): https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/18287591/child-rapists-escape-punishment-apologise/

18/04/2022: When Age Poll discovers you are a dead duck: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/04/ninesmhage-poll-finds-voters-have-woken-up-to-therapeutic-albanese-the-hollow-man.html

17/04/2022: New tricks in electronics: https://scitechdaily.com/the-future-of-electronics-new-fermi-arcs-discovered/

17/04/2022: Sri Lanka is to declare bankruptcy – if this works it could become a popular way out of national debt traps created by over-zealous leftist economists, but I somehow doubt it will. We should be warned however: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/sri-lanka-government-suspends-external-debt-payments-signaling-bankruptcy-due-impacts-covid-19-ukraine-war/

17/04/2022: I want my country back too. For example, our feed and grain store in Morwell (MacRoberts - a third generation business which heretofore had not missed a single day) has been closed for weeks because of a completely spurious useless onerous vaccine mandate: https://spectator.com.au/2022/04/i-want-my-country-back/

17/04/2022: Too true: Peta Credlin's great expose on Anthony Albanese: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/04/peta-credlins-great-expose-on-anthony-albanese.html

16/04/2022: Watch out – carnivorous horses: https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/carnivorous-horses-0016638

16/04/2022: Yes, time to take cobalt out of lithium batteries: https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2022/04/13/cobalt-free-lithium-ion-auto-batteries/1731649255014/

16/04/2022: Modelling vs reality: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/04/15/roaring-and-screaming/

16/04/2022: So, not enough that the cops let the protesters in but they were led in by undercover Feds: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2022/04/14/yet-another-conspiracy-theory-comes-true-at-least-20-feds-embedded-at-capitol-on-jan-6-n1589815

15/04/2022: Taking a balloon ride to the edge of space. Same view – much more affordable: https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2022/04/12/space-perspective-unveils-spaceship-neptune/4201649795426/

15/04/2022: “You can put lipstick on a hog and call it Monique, but it's still a pig.” Besides, Albo could not lie straight in bed. Unless Labor can come up with something/someone better than this before May 21 they will spend another three years in opposition (but God save us from Penny Wong!): https://www.advanceaustralia.org.au/each_way_albo_s_top_ten_political_each_way_bets

15/04/2022: Trust the expert: https://www.rebelnews.com/leading_australian_cardiologist_slams_push_for_mrna_vaccines

15/04/2022: The green energy transition which will not work. Already we have backup household generator/s here at Jeeralang Junction because we regularly lose power (about once a week for some time, and at least once a year for days!) This has been brought about because of the failure to replace Hazelwood with reliable base load generation (coal/nuclear – there is currently no other alternative). The situation will get worse as other coal generators close (Liddell, Yallourn etc). Then we will have brown-outs and blackouts everywhere very, very often. This situation will continue for years as it takes years to build base load generators even after the decision has been made – if it is ever made. The lunatics have been and still are running the asylum. This has to stop: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/04/guest-post-by-rafe-champion-energy-security-on-the-edge-of-a-cliff/

14/04/2022: Albanese – so smart: “Solar panels on the roof charging your vehicle overnight.” Thank goodness the Labor Party has a leader as useless as this guy – else they might have some chance of winning. Even that old Leftie Tom Uren described him as a ‘young Trot’ in his autobiography. Look, Albanese is an unreconstructed commie whatever ‘conservative’ disguises he may try to put on. Worse than that (even) is that he is clearly an idiot who struggles to talk: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2021/04/therapeutic-albaneses-solar-panels-charging-the-electric-car-overnight.html

14/04/2022: What a great idea – and to think, once I didn’t believe in censorship: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dont-say-gay-florida-raise-kids-homosexual_n_6245acc7e4b03516d42d0400

14/04/2022: I suspect these 1,000 dead athletes (including Shane Warne) are only the tip of the iceberg – what we don’t know (for sure - yet) is whether ‘the cure is worse than the complaint’. Hopefully it is not, but remember this, ‘Hope’ was the last of the evils to be released from Pandora’s box: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/04/the-year-of-collapsing-athletes-890-athletes-collapse-or-die-and-counting/

14/04/2022: Social ‘experiments’ have real-world consequences. Vote for the Left and you will get economic chaos (as the figures out from the US show). We are already getting a ‘trickle-down’ effect of this here – and have supply-side issues (have you tried to buy any lumber from a hardware store recently?) Most of the world was gulled into a massive over-reaction to ‘The Pandemic’ (no doubt what Xi intended when he deliberately released it as part of his push for world hegemony). Unfortunately Morisson and his Liberals were no exception here, and we will have to live with the trillion dollar debt for more than a generation. This is a worse economic situation than our spending on WW2 resulted in! (but we simply had to oppose the Axis with every breath of our beings). However we need to put such recklessness behind us, not draw even more dire happenings on ourselves by electing a left-wing government (such as they have presently in the US) https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/biden-economy-truly-bidens-inflation-look-comparison-prior-years-using-cpi-data/

13/04/2022: Sustainable nuclear fusion edges closer and closer: https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-shatter-record-for-the-amount-of-energy-produced-during-a-controlled-sustained-fusion-reaction/

13/04/2022: Putin’s energy policy and strategy over the last 20 years makes him look a lot smarter than most of NATO: https://www.commentary.org/articles/james-meigs/germany-russia-energy/

13/04/2022: The Bee is right – this trans evil must end: https://babylonbee.com/news/are-you-a-groomer-9-things-to-look-for

13/04/2022: 536 AD: Something like this can happen again any day and no amount of ‘global warming’ hype or hysteria will have any effect on it whatever – imagine across China alone 80% of the population died: https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-important-events/climate-cataclysm-001360?fbclid=IwAR3L-CxaiHq4Pji3gD7TK5Sx1-HM0xGywdoIIy-xvSU784YBozVPd_t8NPE

12/04/2022: It is not getting warmer stupid. It has not been for thousands of years. This was always a commie lie. Let’s all move on with our lives, build some new power stations, buy an SUV and an aircon and have a nice holiday somewhere via jet travel: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/04/11/new-study-arctic-was-much-warmer-6000-years-ago-90-of-glaciers-ice-caps-smaller-than-present-or-absent/

12/04/2022: The Touch of Contagion. One thing I really liked about ‘the pandemic’ was the way people stopped touching you. I have always been stand-offish from when I was a child, so this suited me just fine. I value my personal space and am very choosy about who is welcome in it. My wife of 50 years for example. My (grown up) children on special occasions. Pretty much no-one else. I really valued not having to shake hands. I have always hated that ‘trial of strength’ thing which so many men (particularly) want to turn it into, and my increasing finger (and thumb) arthritis has made it mostly a painful and unpleasant custom. The faux hugging which (what?) morphed out of English soccer/gay culture (I don’t know) I have always found utterly repellent. I rarely hug (anyone) so why I should want to hug (pretty much) total strangers or simply acquaintances (when I would pretty much never hug my trusted long-term friends and rarely even family) is a total mystery to me. I deplore the pressure to conform to this particular unpleasant tactile torture. One should not be thought ‘unfriendly’ if one simply does not want to embrace. I believe I can show that/if I trust and like you without such superficial shows.

12/04/2022: Steve Kates is quite right – if we want to throw our country away we should elect the (pro Chinese) communist Albanese who will flood the nation with illegal immigrants and so weaken our defence we will soon not have a country at all (after he has wrecked it some more with other crazy leftie/welfare & etc policies): https://newcatallaxy.blog/2022/04/11/are-australians-stupid-enough-to-elect-our-own-version-of-joe-biden/

12/04/2022: There has never been so much media, it appears to be so much more live and immediate than in the past, but the Left’s ‘march through the institutions’ has destroyed its credibility, making it almost worthless – a vehicle which could have been so transformational in human betterment lies in the gutter. The average (conservative) citizen’s trust of the media is unlikely to be very different from what we see in the US. Polling is also increasingly fraught. This makes anticipating how the people will vote a completely spurious exercise (it probably always was). Let’s hope our voting system has not been so dreadfully compromised (as in the US) as to make an honest result impossible. I am not in favour of early and absentee voting (except for people with proven serious need). We should all vote in person on the same day (with proof of identity) so that we see that the result is indeed a reflection of what the people want when they all have access to the same information. That being said, we need to remove the dreadful undemocratic impediments to an honest result that the distortions of the Senate (where eg a Tasmanian voter still counts ten times a NSW one for example – the situation is even worse in relation to the Territories): https://joannenova.com.au/2022/04/can-anyone-still-pretend-the-media-are-not-a-wing-of-the-democrats/

11/04/2022: On Peter Walsh’s Death on this day in 2015: He was Finance Minister in the Hawke Government. He was possibly the last economically literate Labor leader. Comparing him to the commie rabble running the party now evokes the cry, ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’(Dante)‘Walsh was not selective in his hatred of rent-seekers and protectionists: He despised trade union leaders as much as he despised farm and business leaders for their special interest pleading. And he was just as withering in his critiques of the environmental movement’s anti-growth agenda….He abhorred the rising influence of the environmental movement on the Labor Party and wrote that “since the 1980s Australian Labor Party policy has been incrementally hijacked by well-heeled, self-indulgent, morally vain and would-be authoritarian activists whom the media often describes as the intelligentsia”.’ From his obit in the Australian.

11/04/2022: E-ink displays for your phone are just around the corner promising huge improvements in battery life: https://newatlas.com/electronics/e-ink-kaleido-3-epaper/

11/04/2022: Maybe not so bad after all - Scientists Finally Have Clues About What We See When We Die: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a39454993/dying-brain-waves/

11/04/2022: The 1911 9mm is a classic gun for self-defence – why can’t we all own one here in Oz: https://www.shootingillustrated.com/content/dear-9-mm-1911-i-you/

11/04/2022: One thing Putin did right: https://www.popsci.com/space/astronaut-mark-vande-hei-russian-soyuz-landing/

10/04/2022: Mysteries of aluminium foil: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/why-aluminum-foil-has-a-shiny-and-a-dull-side/ar-AAKizNQ?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=3a604cdb7bb2495fb21b9344e709bb69

10/04/2022: Private space travel (at US$55 million a ticket). I guess I won’t be going soon: https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2022/04/08/spacex-axiom-private-astronaut-international-space-station/5351649362926/

10/04/2022: She’ll be right mate: In 2021 coral cover, snow cover, forest cover, rainfall and river inflows increased: https://www.advanceaustralia.org.au/in_2021_coral_cover_snow_cover_forest_cover_rainfall_and_river_inflows_increased

10/04/2022: We have needed to implement something like this in Oz for nearly fifty years. Let’s do it now: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/education/2022/04/how-the-uk-combats-activism-in-the-classroom/

See Also: Why Australian Teachers Preach Green Rubbish: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/education/2022/04/why-australian-teachers-can-preach-green-rubbish/

09/04/2022: This could be the biggest (and smallest) discovery of the C21st: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60993523

09/04/2022: Aussies are not convinced by climate alarmism, so let’s ditch it: https://www.advanceaustralia.org.au/no_surprise_72_of_aussies_say_cheap_reliable_power_is_more_important_than_net_zero

09/04/2022: Sri Lanka demonstrates the practicality of organic agriculture by starving. This follows on from their destroying their economy by selling themselves to China. Please wake up world. The Left is barking mad – and evil: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri-lanka-organic-farming-crisis/

09/04/2022: Probably illegal even to say so but long since time we recriminalised non-hetero sexuality in public – as well as its advocacy and support. This woke agenda has already done enormous damage to society (as I long predicted it would). This evil cant be allowed to continue to destroy our children and our society any further: https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/rita-panahi/rita-panahi-disney-must-stop-promoting-radical-gender-ideology-to-children/news-story/02994113cd7b65dd29f766e550d18077

08/04/2022: Another threat to diesel supplies – this will have vast downstream effects if it plays out: https://richardsonpost.com/tyler-durden/26229/gas-stations-will-run-dry-catastrophic-scenario-for-diesel-emerging-according-to-worlds-biggest-energy-traders/

08/04/2022: Everything about the pandemic was BS but we just had to destroy our economy, our future prosperity, our freedom – you name it – and it should never end: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/04/unvaxxed-australians-cant-leave-the-country-because-of-a-who-treaty-were-protecting-the-world/

08/04/2022: Who knows what the truth is about what is happening in the Ukraine? Just this morning we learned about Ukrainian atrocities against Russian soldiers for example: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/dog-aint-barking-ukraine/

08/04/2022: Folks have been in gaol for this for well over a year but now the first accused is acquitted because police invited the invaders into the Capitol building: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2022/04/07/first-january-6-defendant-acquitted-n1587832

07/04/2022: Just as global warming goes away in Europe they have to contend with no electricity and no fossil fuels as well – a perfect storm: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/04/climate-change-causes-frosts-now-french-winegrowers-lighting-fires-candles-to-protect-crops/

07/04/2022: Yes there were war crimes, but why were there: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/04/05/there-were-war-crimes-in-bucha-whether-you-choose-to-believe-it-or-not-n1587045

07/04/2022: What possible reason could there be any more for this draconian restriction. Surely our nation is not a prison colony any more: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/04/unvaccinated-australians-cant-leave-australia-unless-they-escape-is-that-swim-paddle-or-dingy/

07/04/2022: What’s happening in Shanghai? “Will the proponents of such lockdowns eventually be prosecuted for the horrific damage they have done to society”? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPy3aF3LgP4&t=211s

06/04/2022: Ultralight Windscreen or Chimney Closure: This is so far a 'proof of concept but it will soon be a new model of my diy ultralight roll-up titanium stove/windscreen and may be incorporated into sections of chimney for my ultralight tent stove as it will be so much easier to roll up - and there is nothing to get lost. We will see.

I will make the tags longer than this. I stupidly cut it off. I also needed to allow another 1/2" of overlap. You can cut the slot with the super-scissors/snip they sell everywhere after you have drilled two 1/8" holes the correct distance apart. I needed to be a bit more careful about this.

Nonetheless I am very pleased with the idea. it is simple yet strong. It would work fine in .05mm foil which is all you would need for a windscreen alone and would make a pot screen less than 10 grams weight.

I think for my 4" high hobo stove three of these tag and slot joiners will make a very solid connection. I can add additional slots so that the stove can fit outside the pot or inside the pot.

A little experimentation has shown me that the .1mm foil is more than strong enough to support the weight of a 2 litre pot full of water. I use an 1100 ml pot. Read More: https://www.theultralighthiker.com/2022/04/05/ultralight-windscreen-or-chimney-closure/

06/04/2022: Clearly the Libs are way ahead on Defence – the big one that really matters (watch China!). Do you want to have a country? Those subs too are going to be here sooner than 2030, and need to be: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/04/australia-to-build-hypersonic-missiles-other-new-weapons-under-aukus-agreement.html

06/04/2022: “With enough demographic change, it is possible for new countries to take the place of old ones, and new countries require new histories.” https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/multiculturalism_and_history.html

06/04/2022: ‘Everyone’ is upset about the ‘end of democracy’ in Ukraine but let the real destruction of democracy in the 2020 US election just slip by – but there is vast evidence of a stolen election, millions of votes: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/719657/

06/04/2022: 40 years of satellite records show the average temperature almost never varies by more than half a degree, usually by no more than one tenth of a degree – clearly the earth has a thermostat,: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/04/03/uah-global-temperature-update-for-march-2022-0-15-deg-c/

05/04/2022: It’s the sun stupid: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/27/atmospheric-fingerprint/

05/04/2022: You would hope so anyway: https://pjmedia.com/columns/kevindowneyjr/2022/04/03/a-victim-too-far-how-transgenders-will-bring-down-the-lefty-marxists-who-want-to-destroy-america-n1586542

Anyway better that than this: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/04/02/california-city-approves-program-to-give-trans-non-binary-residents-guaranteed-income-n1586462

05/04/2022: Interesting read - The war on gold: https://richardsonpost.com/harryrichardson/26405/putins-other-war/

05/04/2022: Maybe we just don’t understand Putin’s strategy – an alternative view: http://stuartschneiderman.blogspot.com/2022/03/an-unconventional-analysis-of-putins.html

04/04/2022: Some hope this morning that common sense will prevail: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/hungarians-vote-orbans-12-year-rule-tight-ballot-overshadowed-by-ukraine-war-2022-04-03/

04/04/2022: Governments (everywhere – except perhaps Sweden) completely bungled the covid ‘pandemic’. Racking up this level of debt outside of wartime was economic lunacy (as I said at the outset in January 2020) Now look in detail at the consequences: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/04/your-personal-debt-courtesy-of-the-federal-government-.html

04/04/2022: “But despite his past as a left-wing warrior, the Albanese opposition is playing the small target game (and getting away with it) by “me-too-ing” everything, from nuclear submarines to tax cuts.” – just like Kevin Rudd did too, if you remember. But please remember how, once he was in power all that changed, then morphed into Gillard and the Greens, the whole silly season mess! Let’s vote conservative, then Liberal second with the Left very far down the ticket: https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/federal-election/federal-election-2022-peta-credlins-sky-doco-explores-how-the-campaign-battle-will-unfold/news-story/842864638dcb6054520e3c3a25fdf92d

Note for example these two (same day) ‘news items’. Albanese wishing us ‘Happy Ramadan’ – thanks a lot for that: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/04/therapeutic-albanese-wishing-you-all-a-happy-ramadan.html contrasted with Tony Abbott reflecting on the real achievement and importance of (yet another) free trade agreement (none of which would ever have happened under Labor) this time with India: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/04/tony-abbott-on-our-trade-deal-with-india.html

04/04/2022: Our greatest PM on the way forward in the Ukraine. With the discovery this morning of hundreds of civilians murdered by the Russians (if proven) the relative merits of each side become clearer. We cannot just stand by and allow such things. It is always a question of ‘Who’s turn next?’ https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/04/tony-abbott-on-the-russian-dictators-war-of-subjugation-in-ukraine.html

03/04/2022: I could add a few dot points to this agenda (to save Australia) but these 10 have to be a good start: https://www.advanceaustralia.org.au/an_open_letter_to_josh_frydenberg_include_our_10_policies_in_next_week_s_budget_and_win_big

03/04/2022: Our best PM on war: “We have to make the war that’s unthinkable to us for moral reasons, unthinkable to them for prudential reasons. We who shrink from war because it’s morally wrong have to make others shrink from war because they’d likely lose” (delivered three days before the invasion of Ukraine): https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/04/putins-war-and-the-lessons-of-history/

03/04/2022: Bushfire management – how the ‘experts’ are so often wrong – and with what disastrous results. The people tasked with protecting our crown lands are effectively destroying them: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2022/03/academic-expertise-so-thats-what-its-called/

03/04/2022: Scary stuff – our ‘education system at work, “A survey commissioned by the IPA published last week asked 1000 people “if Australia was in the same position as Ukraine is now would you stay and fight or leave the country?”

Forty six per cent said they would stay and fight, 28 per cent said they would leave the country and 26 per cent were unsure. Just 32 per cent of those aged 18-24 said they would stay and fight and 40 per cent said they would leave the country, 28 per cent said they were unsure.

Slightly more (35 per cent) of those aged 25-34 said they would stay and fight while 38 per cent said they would leave the country, 27 per cent were unsure. A clear majority in those age groups therefore indicated they would either run or were undecided about defending Australia. I only wish they would leave now” https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/piers-akerman-disappointing-number-of-young-people-would-choose-flight-over-fight/news-story/eedaa2e77393ed5387a77fac3b5bdf84

02/04/2022: Announcement: Liberal Fact-Checkers Have Ruined April Fools' Day – and a lot else besides. Just about every day the news headlines sound like April Fools Day: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2022/04/01/announcement-liberal-fact-checkers-have-ruined-april-fools-day-n1586136

02/04/2022: Rat Colony Beneath D.C. Disgusted To Find City Infested With Politicians: https://babylonbee.com/news/rat-colony-beneath-dc-disgusted-to-find-city-infested-with-politicians

02/04/2022: Le Pen may get over the line this time – that would be an early swallow: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220329-french-far-right-leader-le-pen-closing-gap-on-macron-polls

02/04/2022: A little war in the Ukraine and suddenly nuclear is popular again - and renewables stink: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/04/japan-flips-on-nuclear-it-tried-to-go-green-without-it-but-now-wants-to-reopen-closed-plants/

01/04/2022: Ultralight Survival Made Easy: I decided here to update the post The Complete Survival Guide (which you should still read) as it had become a little out-of-date in the three years since I wrote it and I had since written many other useful pieces of advice which I could incorporate in a new post, which this is.

I might have also called it, ‘I tell you we’ll astonish the new chums to see how we travel the land’ after the refrain from the old bush song The Springtime it Brings on the Shearing. (I also mentioned this song in the post Johnny Cakes – which you should try).

And it is a good point because these itinerant C19th bush workers with their swags (or blueys) were wonderful experts at ultralight journeying over the vast distances of the Australian outback which would put to shame any of our current generation. Suppose you wanted to make your own.

I remember reading ‘The Cattle King’ by Ion Idriess when I was a youngster about our great Aussie icon Sidney Kidman – and you should too. You can buy it from Amazon from $8.99. It is just quite wonderful. I believe Nicole is a remote descendant. I think Gina now owns much of the remaining Kidman ’empire’ – another wonderful ‘self-made Aussie hero, so it remains in Australian hands.

Even as an old man (like me) he would regularly leave Adelaide with just his saddle horse, pack horse and his cattle dog and within a few short weeks have crossed the entire continent through the trackless (often waterless) wilderness to the Gulf of Carpentaria – all by himself, and did so many, many times. Old hands still tell of how he would just appear in the darkness sitting by their campfire as they yarned over the billy. Read More: https://www.theultralighthiker.com/2022/03/29/ultralight-survival-made-easy/

01/04/2022: Why you should not try to rob a gun store: https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/security-camera-captures-gun-store-owner-opening-fire-on-two-thieves-who-came-in-shooting-video/

01/04/2022: Heinlein’s crazy years – the UK’s Opposition leader can’t say whether women have penises. Is he a grown up, or even a human being: https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/34109

01/04/2022: A Missing Link - I have often wondered at some similarities of ideas amongst the Pre-Socratics and both Buddhism and Confucianism. No we learn that there was indeed intellectual contact at the time (c250 BC): https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/greek-buddhism-0016584

01/04/2022: What is truth? I don’t know Scott, you described Zelensky who came to power in a coup in 2014 and has recently outlawed opposition parties as a ‘beacon of democracy’ but figures seem to show what the Russian people are 80% behind Vlad Putin: https://extra.cw/putins-popularity-up-since-start-of-ukraine-conflict-poll/

31/03/2022: Hunting Tales: You will find many, many posts in this blog which mention hunting (particularly sambar deer hunting which has been a passion of mine for much of my adult life) but there are many more which are relevant to the art and skill of hunting.

I have been a hunter since I could walk over 70 years ago now as were several generations of my family before me. Hunting is a great good. It has been valued as such by most of the people who have ever lived for over a million years now. You can ‘deconstruct ‘ values all you like – it would be mighty strange indeed if they were wrong!

Some other posts which you might explore which are relevant to hunting are my many posts about woodslore and survival, my posts about DIY gear, some of my canoeing posts…often other posts contain anecdotes about hunting or relevant advice.

These posts will not be your ‘conventional’ hunting yarns with a dead critter at the end. While that might be the ‘end’ of hunting. It is only a small part of this great sport. They will very often be something quit different from what you are used to, but I hope you enjoy them. Read More: https://www.theultralighthiker.com/2022/03/28/hunting-tales/

31/03/2022: Energy from nothing – what we have long thought impossible has apparently been done NB: his may one day work for your phone but it is unlikely to ever be grid scale. However, it does reveal that nature still has many surprises in wait for us: https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/scientists-build-circuit-that-generates-clean-limitless-power-from-graphene

31/03/2022: “The IPCC statement that “The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible” appears to be true: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/28/the-100000-year-problem-and-earths-chaotic-non-linear-climate/

In a similar vein, the climate past is far from settled: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/30/climate-past-far-from-settled-7-major-temperature-reconstructions-find-no-agreement/

31/03/2022: “Of the 32 (kindergarten) students I teach 20 of them have come out as LGBTQIA and have come out to me” – I seriously question the ‘right’ of teachers to discuss such private (and adult) issues with their students. I think I would be more in favour of removing such teachers from the classroom altogether. Surely there is no sane society where such matters are core curriculum: http://ace.mu.nu/archives/398431.php

31/03/2022: My sentiments exactly - Mad, bad and dangerous to vote for, “Put simply, when ideologues demand power but cannot maintain it politically because they are cruel ideologues that destroy what they touch, expect more of their insanity to follow.”: https://newcatallaxy.blog/2022/03/29/mad-bad-and-dangerous-to-vote-for/

30/03/2022: DIY $4 & 20 Gram Roll-Up Titanium Stove: I have just completed making this titanium version of my roll-up hobo stove (as threatened here) and the carbon fibre cosy to go with it. I started with a 500 mm by 100 mm piece of titanium sourced from Aliexpress for less than US4. As stated in my earlier post You can buy the titanium foil to make the 20 gram one from Aliexpress for A$3.87 delivered. I have marked off the circle/hexagon for the fire door here. Note the ‘V’ at the bottom and top so it will roll up and fit in the billy. The circle is 2 1/2″ (62mm) in diameter. The door is 1/2″ from the bottom. You can build it with just a pair of craft scissors, a drill and a pop riveter. I use stainless steel rivets so they will not melt. Here it is complete. Read More: https://www.theultralighthiker.com/2022/03/28/diy-4-20-gram-roll-up-titanium-stove/

30/03/2022: The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife – we will be hearing more about this in the future depending on how much info is suppressed: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/08/ariel-sabar-what-happened-to-the-gospel-of-jesus-wife/615160/ As in https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/03/the-scandals-of-the-dead-sea-scrolls/ So much we still don’t know about the origins of ‘the world’s greatest religion’ and about the historicity (or otherwise) of Jesus himself.

30/03/2022: You would have to be nuts if you think there isn’t a ‘Deep State’ actually running things and that our ‘democracy’ is a fraud: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/fbi-didnt-want-the-hunter-biden-laptop-then-sat-on-it-then-whistleblowers-life-is-destroyed/

30/03/2022: Is Russia losing in the Ukraine? What is the truth? Who can know? They certainly have not succeeded as quickly as I assumed they would (which may be a deterrent to China vis a vis Taiwan in future) but they have certainly not withdrawn either: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/russia-ropes-ukraine/

Meanwhile, sanctions that work? https://instapundit.com/511785/

30/03/2022: When the Japanese arrived in the Solomons (during WW2) Australia was (rightly) deeply troubled – as we should be today by the Chinese: https://www.advanceaustralia.org.au/beijing_plans_on_a_military_base_off_the_coast_of_queensland

29/03/2022: Other Uses for a Garbage Bag: Many of you no doubt use a trash bag as a liner for your pack – which is a great use for them. As a spare ultralight raincoat is another. Still another is re-purposing one as a pad inflator (bag). I almost never carry the inflator bag (because of the weight which came with my sleeping bag, preferring to dry it out properly when I get home and taking the chance that mould etc will shorten its life – but I am incurable.

You may prefer to make yourself a less than one ounce bag inflator with a trash bag and a bottle cap. You can use an ordinary drink bottle cap or if you hunt around you will find an even lighter alternative. Read More: https://www.theultralighthiker.com/2022/03/27/other-uses-for-a-garbage-bag/

29/03/2022: Mighty Oaks: A lot of PC here (as compared with a single C19th French shepherd who famously reforested tens of thousands of acres with oaks in Southern France), but they are great trees which will grow practically anywhere. We have planted many (and particularly quite a few of evergreen varieties) though we will never see what becomes of them. A mature English Oak takes approx 800 years to grow and will cover about an acre and provide an understory for other splendid trees such as chestnuts. Some of our holm oaks planted thirty years ago are around sixty feet tall now and amongst the most beautiful trees on the property: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60617810

29/03/2022: If the mRNA ‘vaccines’ were never vaccines (as is now revealed) what was their purpose? I am so glad I resisted them. We stuck to Astra-Zenica and would now choose Novavax, if indeed we would not have been better off to just simply stick to known preventions and cures (some of which were made illegal in some jurisdictions by their medical establishments). I suspect what I had for months last year and which I cleared up with Ivermectin was in fact covid anyway. Lots of similar symptoms anyway. Likely Della had it (asymptomatically) too. We will never know. What a boondoggle this whole farrago was. There are certainly rumblings (of info) that these vaccines are having some very unpleasant downstream effects indeed (increases in cancers, AIDS-like symptoms etc particularly after multiple jabs). Let’s hope it doesn’t pan out to be true: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/what_if_the_covid19_vaccines_are_not_really_vaccines.html

Surely this is proof that it is weakening their immune systems too: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/latest-cdc-data-shows-vaccinated-children-aged-5-11-now-likely-catch-covid-unvaccinated-peers/

No doubt Clive is right (ie he would have died). How many other less fortunate folk have indeed died because of unnecessary and draconian interventions by the likes of Dictator Dan who should be indicted and executed for crimes against humanity: https://www.rebelnews.com/australian_mining_magnate_s_controversial_covid_treatment

29/03/2022: Has to be a good news story, surely? https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/new-zealand-massey-universitys-queer-fat-studies-lecturer-fatlicious-feminist-dies-suddenly-sleep-42/

29/03/2022: Absolutely right Alan Moran, You can't save the world with Net Zero. Such green fantasies will have exactly the opposite effect: https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/03/you-cant-save-the-world-with-net-zero/

70% of Australians don’t even want to send $1 a week to reach net zero yet such a policy would cost trillions be hugely economically and socially destructive. We must cease this madness forthwith: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/70-of-australians-dont-even-want-to-spend-1-a-week-on-net-zero/

28/03/2022: Ultralight Ratchet Tie Down: Here’s a handy little gadget I picked up from Bunnings yesterday for A$14 per pair (Mar 2022)

Each 6′ (1.8 metre) tie down weighs 44 grams. Each metal hook seems to weigh about 10 grams whilst the plastic ratchet itself weighs only 14 grams so that if you wanted to dispense with the hooks for weight you could. You could also substitute a different length/weight of 3 mm cord if you wanted a device which was longer/shorter. I can envisage numerous uses for such a device including a secure means of attaching your pack to your pack raft or hauling your shower into the air from a branch.

They also come in 2.4 metre lengths. Read More: https://www.theultralighthiker.com/2022/03/27/ultralight-ratchet-tie-down/

28/03/2022: Further evidence Russia may be losing in Ukraine: https://www.jpost.com/international/article-702428

28/03/2022: Fortunately other things have eclipsed the ‘climate strike’ but I have to agree with the author about the quite dreadful manipulation and corruption of the children involved: https://newcatallaxy.blog/2022/03/27/lord-of-the-flies/

28/03/2022: An interesting anniversary I missed a couple of days back. Reminiscent of events in that part of the world today? https://www.ancientpages.com/2017/03/24/on-this-day-in-history-turco-mongol-emperor-timur-sacks-damascus-on-mar-24-1401/?fbclid=IwAR04ma_pgtFjmZXvFFh6VL0Xzm9tWbuAHjNO_I77Zhk6st8nFEarlstbwrA

28/03/2022: 3,000+ Years! You just can’t challenge Israel’s right to exist: https://www.timesofisrael.com/archaeologist-claims-to-find-oldest-hebrew-text-in-israel-including-the-name-of-god/

27/03/2022: Responsible Sambar Deer Hunting: As I recover from my total knee replacement operation (five weeks now -and going well so far, thank you), every morning my attention is drawn to this sight outside my kitchen window. I know as a responsible farmer I should not allow this guy even to exist, but no-one is perfect - and it is so cute and will soon succumb to some awful disease anyway. (The blackberry also craves attention).

NB If you took a second or two to see the rabbit (I would have seen it instantly) it is because you are not ‘looking through’ but ‘looking at’. This is the most important hunting skill, and the first you must master.

He first cleans himself diligently then lies in the sun on his tummy like that for over an hour every morning on a little platform he has constructed under a shrub on the slope behind the house. This is a well-established habit. All creatures fall into a pattern of such habits - even human beings. A moment's refection of your daily routines will cause you to admit that you are no different in this than your wild brethren. The successful hunter can utilise careful observation and such recurring habits to ensure success in harvesting nature's annual bounty for the table.

And that is what responsible hunting is - it is not pest management. Its goal is not the eradication of some undesirable feral species but the careful nurture and management of a noble creature and desirable food source. Just as a farmer (such as me) manages his flocks to ensure that they increase and multiply each year (and are healthy and content) to the maximum extent of the available food source so that in autumn when that food supply begins to decline they will be sent off to market for the benefit of other people's tables rather than slowly starve as the lean times of winter hit. This is nature's cycle.

27/03/2022: Golden Earrings (1947) – what a ripper of a film. Ray Milland’s segue of facial expressions on seeing the earrings in the first minutes of the film is one of the greatest acting feats of the cinema: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Earrings PS It is available on Pirate Bay.

27/03/2022: A New Birth Control Pill for Men. This could be interesting – but will women accept that you have taken it? https://scitechdaily.com/new-male-birth-control-pill-effectively-prevents-pregnancy-without-side-effects/

27/03/2022: Now seems clear the Bidens (father and son – 10% for ‘The Big Guy’ if you remember) actually funded the biolabs in the Ukraine: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/not-only-were-there-us-bioweapons-lab-but-the-presidents-son-put-half-a-million-dollars-in-them/

Also note How the ‘Trump Won’ Movement Will Be Vindicated: https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/25/how-the-trump-won-movement-will-be-vindicated/

27/03/2022: Of course I think they are useless bird and bat chomping monsters which will never produce a net watt of electricity but absurd isn’t it? We lived nearly half our lives within 5km of the (late - alas) beautiful Hazelwood Power Station (when will we have the courage/sense to build a new one?) which was definitely a noisy old (1956) thing. I could often hear it roaring from our house (not quite all the time, though when we first came here my hearing was such that I could hear a low moan from its chimneys most of the time) but I accepted the small inconvenience as the price we paid for having such a wonderful service (electricity) at our fingertips – and all the economic and social benefits for millions of Victorians that ensued: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/26/its-a-disaster-aussie-noise-nuisance-court-defeat-panicking-renewable-energy-investors/ & https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/victorian-windfarm-loses-court-case-on-noise-must-turn-off-turbines-at-night/

27/03/2022: You would think the Government and the IPCC would have been on top of data like this (as with similar unreconstructed thermometer records going back to the C17th some places – and other historical data, some much older), but they are captive to a climate change scenario and myth so it is up to citizens to correct the record. You will note that the record wet and dry years are now pushed back to the 1850s. I have no doubt that the same thing would happen with temperature records if earlier records were counted in. We can see this already eg in the Cape Otway Vic historical data and in the earliest Sydney (1790s) temperatures, as I have mentioned before.: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/26/rescued-victorian-rainfall-data-smashes-former-records/

26/03/2022: Visual Hiking Oxymoron- please don't make these bizarre ankle breaking wildfire causing stone cairns - and why in an isolated spot would you need a chainsaw?

May be an image of tree, nature and text that says 'THE CLOSER YOU GET TO NATURE THE FURTHER YOU ARE FROM IDIOTS'

26/03/2022: Are you a woman – twelve signs to look for: https://babylonbee.com/news/are-you-a-woman-12-signs-to-look-for

If only it wasn’t so sinister: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/03/25/think-you-know-what-a-woman-is-usa-today-says-science-should-make-you-think-again-n1584248

26/03/2022: Aside from the ‘mean girls’ fiasco and Albo’s massage parlor antics the Labor Party has other chickens which have still to come home to roost: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/03/kathy-sherriff-announces-shes-launched-a-civil-action-against-bill-shorten-alleging-rape.html

26/03/2022: Now even the New York Times admits that the Bidens are crooks surely their demise is imminent. This dreadful fake ‘Presidency’ will not last beyond the mid-terms (in November). (I include the awful Kamala Harris in this). Democracy may even re-emerge in the ‘Land of the Free’: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/america-is-finding-out-the-presidents-son-cheated-the-media-buried-it-the-fbi-hid-it/

26/03/2022: Once you go to the ‘real science’ you can trust it. Understanding it is more difficult! However, in this example, “IPCC’s goal (aside from frightening the public) is to determine the ECS, the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity, which is the surface temperature rise (∆Tsurf) due to a doubling of CO2 concentration. They are free to speculate, of course, but they are intellectually obligated to see whether their ECS makes sense. All they have to do is to apply the Stefan-Boltzmann law to their predicted temperature rise.

If they do so, they will find out that 16.4 W/m2 (for a 3^oC) rise in radiative flux is violently in contradiction to the 3.71 W/m2 of “radiative forcing” that their models say causes that 3^oC temperature rise. They are free to come up with an explanation, but they first have to apply the Stefan-Boltzmann law to their ECS. Maybe in a few more decades, IPCC will make this discovery.” One thing is certain: ‘The Science’ certainly seems to cause mass hysteria: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/24/basic-climate-physics-10/

25/03/2022: NIKE Releases New Women's Swimsuit With Extra Space For Male Genitalia: https://babylonbee.com/news/nike-releases-new-womens-swimsuit-with-extra-space-for-male-genitalia

25/03/2022: This Romanian MP is (unfortunately) so right. You can’t be a great light for democracy when you threw it all away over covid. Much of the West’s reaction to Putin is of this nature. You have a very short memory if you can’t recall Dictator Dan’s treatment of our citizens and ‘freedoms’: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/trudeau-roasted-as-a-dictator-in-the-eu-we-watched-you-trample-women-with-horses/

25/03/2022: An outstanding family – putting your money where your mouth is: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ivanka-trump-meals-ukrainian-refugees

25/03/2022: It appears as if for one generation at least, the covid mandate was worse than the Vietnam War: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/shocking-millennials-experienced-worst-ever-excess-mortality-history-84-increase-deaths-causes-vaccine-mandates-introduced-video/ PS: I recently lost a (young) friend in this way - a few (older) in Vietnam too, of course in the ‘normal’ way, & https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/additional-data-corroborates-excess-deaths-among-millennials-since-experimental-vaccines-mandated-confirms-covid-not-cause/ It certainly appear as if it was the vaccine (mRNA) and not covid. Let’s hope this technology is not a ticking bomb.

I don’t know what to make of this message I received from a friend. It would be truly horrifying if true, but there is a lot of this stuff out there: https://www.facebook.com/messenger_media/?thread_id=1487568149&attachment_id=708801196780080&message_id=mid.%24cAABa89gvkI-F1qKixF_pV1ZJQJJ9

24/03/2022: Now two advantages of Antabuse: you don’t get blind or blind drunk: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-03-antabuse-revive-vision-people-disorders.html

24/03/2022: A very interesting new drug – good news for the elderly: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-03-oral-drug-death-covid-mice.html

24/03/2022: Giving a big cheer to the Daily Wire: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/cancelling-cancel-culture-when-being-anti-woke-is-not-a-secret-but-a-selling-point/

24/03/2022: No way to confirm this story, but hubris and over-reach are the bare bones of tragedy: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10641565/Russian-execution-squads-orders-kill-defectors-writes-IAN-BIRRELL.html

24/03/2022: Vlad ‘fueled’ the greens’ war on fracking (even though just about everywhere is sitting on a virtually infinite supply of cheap gas). They are gullible fools after all, eager to take anyone’s money so they can destroy ‘capitalism’: https://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/putins-fake-fracking-news/ & https://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/frack-to-the-future/ Who is in charge of our governments? Vladimir Putin or the people of Australia? I see news this morning that Vlad is insisting Europe pays for its gas in roubles. On the other hand there are rumours of mass defections amongst Russian troops. Where is truth? If Vlad falls (and the greens lose their cash cow) will they fall with him?

23/03/2022: How Randomized Control Trials really work: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/rct-study-shows-parachutes-make-no-difference-when-jumping-from-aircraft/

23/03/2022: 5,000 exo-planets so far – how many more once James Web becomes fully functional? Still only the tip of the iceberg but what is becoming clear is that planetary systems (around solar masses – and elsewhere even) is the norm. It would be hard to imagine that life has not arisen on some of them and that indeed in some places that it has not evolved into intelligent life (even on earth?): https://scitechdaily.com/cosmic-milestone-nasa-confirms-5000-exoplanets-it-is-inevitable-that-well-find-some-kind-of-life-somewhere/

23/03/2022: Proof: All for nothing – no change in human CO2 enmissions will make the slightest difference to the climate: “Anthropogenic CO₂ is virtually constant compared to the seasonal variations of the natural sources and sinks. The monthly anthropogenic flux change is much smaller than the uncertainty in the net global monthly flux changes. Therefore, there is no support for the claims about anthropogenic CO₂ driving the annual changes. The seasonal natural source fluxes swamp the anthropogenic sources. Eliminating anthropogenic CO₂ would have a negligible impact on annual increases, which is why the pandemic lockdowns had an imperceptible effect on the global atmospheric concentrations. I do not expect even draconian reductions in anthropogenic CO₂ to have the kind of results claimed to justify eliminating fossil fuel use. The annual growth in CO₂is a result of increasing natural sources that is not compensated by commensurate increases in sinks.” https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/22/anthropogenic-co2-and-the-expected-results-from-eliminating-it/

23/03/2022: Good Lord – the Ukrainians are castrating captured Russian soldiers, but they are ‘the good guys’? That’s about as bad as it gets. When did you last hear of prisoners of war treated thus? As I have said before I’m not about to throw away any of my lives fighting for either side in this war, however if you really expect ‘right’ to be on your side you should perhaps make a little more effort to distinguish yourself eg as being pro democracy (instead of outlawing all opposition parties - some with 43 member in Parliament and also fighting the Russians) as Zelensky has just done. One should note that he came to power in 2014 in a coup ousting the elected government and has failed to have ‘free and fair’ elections since (particularly in the ‘disputed’ territories). Then there is the issue of his secret NATO bases, the Biolabs, and work being conducted on developing nuclear weapons – all these things clearly aimed at making an attack on Russia in the future (under the aegis of Nato etc). At present I see Zelensky as somewhat of a Macbeth figure willing to see his country destroyed (less he be) or ‘wish the estate o' the world were now undone’ as Macbeth says. Vlad is certainly not a good guy’ either and ought not be visiting the horror we see daily on the people of Ukraine, but there are always at least two sides to any conflict : https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/tucker-carlson-is-ukraine-really-a-democracy/ & https://nationalinterest.org/feature/true-solution-tragedy-ukraine-201302 I suspect that this is too much to be hoped for, “There is, therefore, only one true solution to the cycle of tragedy. As the famed Welsh social critic Raymond Williams wrote in his classic, Modern Tragedy, it is a “quite different peacemaking that would attempt to resolve rather than to cover the determining tragic disorder. Any such resolution would mean changing ourselves, in fundamental ways.”

22/03/2022: Adventures in Plumbing – be a little more careful what you flush: https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/adventures-in-plumbing/

22/03/2022: A great essay by Keith Windschuttle on the causes of war: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2022/03/the-causes-of-war/

No, I am not generally in favour of war but it would be nice to think that one’s ‘own side’ were the ‘good guys’: https://newcatallaxy.blog/2022/03/21/what-was-the-2014-euromaidan-coup-in-ukraine-and-why-does-it-matter/

22/03/2022: The (‘Liberal’) loss in SA surely gives a clear lesson that you do not defeat socialists by aping them (as Marshall sought to do) Behind a paywall but well worth a read. (Andrew Bolt) It had already happened in WA after all: https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/andrew-bolt/andrew-bolt-liberals-can-learn-a-valuable-lesson-from-steven-marshalls-election-loss/news-story/441c33d662e035bfa16480ebfae696db) Oh Yes: “The next Liberal government, with the support of such independents, must purge itself of the fifth column of climate cultists within its ranks if it is to have any hope of keeping this nation strong and safe.” https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/03/the-rope-the-chair-the-noose/

22/03/2022: Can Civilisation Be Saved? Substitute for the subject term ‘The West’, ‘Australia’, ‘The World’, etc the problem remains the same. We are beset by enemies all around –and within. They are foes both physical, intellectual and spiritual – and they are very, very potent – and persistent. I have long since given up on understanding what their aims might be. I’m not sure that they have any - save naked power (control), nihilism, the absence of any values, the destruction and abolition of everything which has come before, the replacement of everything with something else or indeed with nothing at all. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” – as Yeats termed it (‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’). I see this trend in every smallest aspect of our lives, and though I fight it with the last shred of my being, I fear that the end is nigh, that the forces of darkness are on the cusp of ultimate victory and that the world will go down into a darkness from which it might never arise again, certainly not in my lifetime. We will not be rescued from this fate by a King Arthur or a Lancelot – we must cleave to much more flawed heroes I’m afraid: the Donald Trumps and Scott Morrisons, even Clive Palmer. Tony Abbott is needed here now more than ever, but I fear we have lost him. Maybe Eric Zamour in France. A new leader must arise in the UK. Nigel Farage perhaps? We must watch and wait with our fingers crossed. If Morrison wins our election in May & Donald Trump is returned (as Speaker and then President) in November, and Zemour takes France, and Johnson is replaced with a real conservative in the UK, then there is hope. If all of these things fail, there may not be any. We are watching ‘The ‘Great Battle of Civilisation’ – as Yeats termed it, not unlike the final battle in the ‘Lord of the Rings’: https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/long-legged-fly/

21/03/2022: “I have no reason to believe that he who would take away my liberty would not when he had me in his power take away everything else,” John Locke.

21/03/2022: What’s The Long Game Behind Fat Pride? I don’t know whether to join this movement or go on a crash diet: https://www.iwf.org/2022/03/17/whats-the-long-game-behind-fat-pride/

21/03/2022: Taiwan may indeed be more difficult to conquer than the Ukraine (and it is likely the Taiwanese would have significant help eg from Japan): https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/china_may_find_that_taiwan_is_a_hard_nut_to_crack.html

21/03/2022: Meanwhile this is very like the capitalists selling the communists the rope with which to hang them(selves): https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/03/19/germany-france-other-eu-members-sold-huge-stocks-of-arms-to-russia-before-invasion-despite-embargo/

Mind you that great ‘democrat’ Zelensky has now decided to institute a one party state in the Ukraine: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/sovereign-democracy-ukraine-zelenskyy-suspends-11-opposition-parties-becoming-head-one-party-state/

21/03/2022: I will extinguish these folks properly if they come to let my tyres down – so over holier than thou bullies and save the world cranks who have no idea how the world actually works. As an example also the anti duck hunting brigade who are so out of touch with the natural world they refuse to understand that seasonal breeding each year creates a surplus of creatures which must be humanely harvested or else they starve the following winter when there is not enough food to sustain them. Who would have thought anti-theft valve locks would be a thing? Who steals air? Well, these people just by breathing. If only we could charge them for it there would soon be many fewer of them (as welfare may not necessarily provide free air – at least not if I was in charge): https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/climate-vandals-are-coming-to-let-down-your-suv-tyres-if-only-they-had-evidence-to-persuade-you-instead/

20/03/2022: Of Course We’re Living in a Simulation. The only people who absolutely disagree are, well, scientists. They need to get over themselves and join the fun: https://www.wired.com/story/living-in-a-simulation/

20/03/2022: Putin really does have a hypersonic missile, ergo he can ‘afford’ to have a nuclear war. Very disturbing news. Maybe we should stay out of this: https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/russia-deploys-hypersonic-kinzhal-superweapon/

Now just exactly how many wars are going on right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts

20/03/2022: Really strange the way the Left has come out on the side of Zelensky (and eg the awful Azov Battalion) until now clearly a ‘white supremacist’ and indeed ‘Neo-Nazi’, instead of Vlad Putin until now clearly the obvious heir of the (communist) USSR – which should have inspired them. Mind you they have never been very clever, but ‘politics makes strange bedfellows’. Next thing you know the Left will be backing capitalism – and Donald Trump. I go too far! No matter what happens they will not become sane.

20/03/2022: What does inflation mean? Tucker’s take. “The standard of living is plummeting”. It is deeply worrying, yet our masters do not seem deeply concerned about this, yet the average housewife and wage earner must surely be. You don’t think this could be(come) the major election issue come May? (Video starts about 20 seconds in) eg, “The internal combustion engine is a miracle upon which all civilization depends”. Oh Yes: https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/watch-live-tucker-carlson-opening-statement-3/

In the same vein: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/the_us_must_face_an_existential_threat_but_its_not_climate_change.html

‘You know there’s a problem when the price of beer is up 5 percent’… https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/you-know-theres-a-problem-when-the-price-of-beer-is-up-5-percent/

19/03/2022: I usually hate music (and particularly as sound effect or score/background in films which ruin the dialogue for me - being substantially deaf) but this was really great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGzK2SwG5io&t=120s

19/03/2022: So True: In his science fiction novel Nemesis, Isaac Asimov describes a female character as possessing the "unloveable virtues": Serious, Practical, Responsible, Dutiful. My wife is also beautiful.

19/03/2022: Two sides to what’s going on in the Ukraine? Surely not: https://newcatallaxy.blog/2022/03/17/in-the-ukraine-there-are-apparently-two-sides-to-the-story/

19/03/2022: This is what your elite leftist masters have in store for you (and me). Hair shirts for the hoi poloi and dachas for the commissars – it was ever thus. We need to make a huge effort to avoid this. Our traditional Oz complacency (‘She’ll be right mate’) will not cut it. The coming elections must be a wholesale rejection of these left-wing notions including those who have infiltrated the Liberal and National Parties. Where that is the case those members need to be replaced by more conservative folks such as Lib Dems, One Nation, UAP, Fishers & Shooters & etc even if some of these people may seem to lack the competency to run the country. I had not noticed that the two main parties actually overflow with outstanding competency either! https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/iea-wants-energy-lockdowns-drive-slower-ban-cars-on-sunday-ride-share-and-blame-putin/ (PS: IEA = International Energy Agency)

19/03/2022: Maybe at the 11^th hour the world can pull back from the Green Armageddon: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/a-kalibr-missile-just-hit-net-zero-germany-wakes-old-coal-plants-uk-talks-of-backflip-on-gas-oil-fracking-too/

Add these into that equation. For example: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/16/no-amount-of-incremental-wind-and-solar-power-can-ever-provide-energy-independence/ & https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-3-14-no-amount-of-incremental-wind-and-solar-power-can-ever-provide-energy-independence & https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/16/green-fuel-folly-forest-thinning-for-wood-pellet-production-has-a-profound-surface-warming-impact/

18/03/2022: Just a reminder: how burning fossil fuels is greening the planet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-nsU_DaIZE&feature=player_embedded#

18/03/2022: Mark Twain, “I was educated once and it took me years to get over it” So true.

18/03/2022: You can’t even imagine these shrieking nutters choosing such a logo – have they never seen a set of male genitals? Well, probably not: https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/controversial-womens-network-logo-taken-down-after-twitter-backlash/news-story/fd5e2d01baa384d2d5b4e20fe86fe0e1

18/03/2022: “This is the way the world ends not with a bang but a whimper,” TS Eliot ‘The Hollow Men’: https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/saudi-arabia-to-accept-yuan-for-chinese-oil-sales/ Maybe time to invest in gold. I have been studying up on what’s available from the Perth Mint. They sure have some pretty coins and do home delivery: https://www.perthmint.com/shop/bullion/bullion-coins/?archived=false&page=2&pageSize=12&query=&sortValue=0

18/03/2022: You might not have heard much about the ‘global cooling’ era we are entering or its impact on the food supply but this article is a reminder of the importance of successful home gardening. I already warned about the dangers of the coming ‘stagflation’ event last week so get your finances in order – times are likely to get tougher and governments world-wide have shot their bolts over the imaginary enemy (covid) and have nothing in their war-chests for the very real dangers ahead. In any case, as I have observed many times before government is the problem, not the solution. We will (thankfully) have to get by with less and less of it in the decades to come. My suggestion has long been to wind it back by 10% per year until it disappears up its own fundament. BTW If you haven’t noticed that government kills more people than any other single thing you just haven’t been watching: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/food_shortages_soon_come__what_to_do.html

17/03/2022: SSDs: Have you bought one of these yet? 40 Grams. Still working out how to get stuff in/out of it to my Android phone – but you can https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/sandisk-1tb-e30-portable-ssd-black-sde30ss1tb I teamed mine with one of these: https://www.theultralighthiker.com/2019/11/23/ultralight-charging-cable/

Mind you 1 Tb Micro sd cards are now $214: https://www.amazon.com.au/SanDisk-Ultra-microSDXC-Memory-Adapter/dp/B08HCPTMJG/ref=asc_df_B08HCPTMJG?tag=bingshopdesk-22&linkCode=df0&hvadid=80676739598376&hvnetw=s&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4584276306375179&psc=1

17/03/2022: Many Thanks. A friend of mine (Brett) has solved a mystery for me (from 28/02): “This video explains there’s a hidden device in its base: https://youtu.be/Y5dylh2aOiw”

17/03/2022: While we are on the topic of reparations for past wrongs (I want some too) No, really I don’t. Though it is true that my ancestors were forced off their ancient lands (eg by the ‘Enclosure Acts) and then many transported for life to Australia Felix in the early C19th (and so on), I have enjoyed a wonderful life right here with the greatest woman imaginable. No-one ‘owes’ me anything.: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/03/john-cleese-the-romans-the-normans-need-to-pay-reparations-to-the-british.html

17/03/2022: How aboriginal (and mountain cattlemen) fire management really worked – and why it is a disaster to abandon it: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2022/03/blackfellas-whitefellas-greenfellas-and-fire/

17/03/2022: Move over Buck Rogers, Neil Armstrong, Elon Musk etc, etc. You are just so patriarchal: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/03/feminisms-final-frontier-spaceships-are-too-phallic-so.html

16/03/2022: DIY Ultralight Shoulder Pouches: I sewed up a couple of shoulder strap pouches (for Best $20 Backpack) from some 2 oz/yd2 ripstop nylon. I guess these are about 3/4 of a litre each, maybe a litre. They can contain an interesting assortment of items you might want to access quickly as you walk along. Spare ammunition, chewing gum etc.

I attached them with an ingenious method I ‘stole’ from Joe Valesko (Zpacks) though I have no idea whether he still uses them. They came on my first old pack from him – a long since discontinued model, worse luck. Simpler is frequently better – and certainly cheaper. Anyway it is a simple ‘button and loop’ design with a length of cord which works to stop them slipping down. Read More: https://www.theultralighthiker.com/2022/03/15/diy-ultralight-shoulder-pouches/

16/03/2022: What a hero she is: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/03/her-majesty-the-queens-message-on-commonwealth-day.html

16/03/2022: ‘Why study English’, they say. Because it is utterly astonishing and you don’t know what you are missing if you don’t: https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/the-twa-corbies/ Warning: may actually take some effort. Sorry. No, not sorry. I can’t see that AR or AI can ever replace the intelligence needed to study and understand a text. Comprehension is key.

16/03/2022: Banning Rail Guns just seems to me like so much virtue signaling. These things are unlikely to become anywhere near as effective as DIY pipe guns (that anyone can make with a few basic tools for probably $10) anytime soon. Eg: https://hackaday.com/2015/11/09/the-most-powerful-diy-railgun/ especially when you should understand that it is already a damned sight easier and cheaper to buy an illegal firearm (eg a Glock) than it is to buy (and licence) the legal alternative. Have a nose around docklands, western suburbs and other sleazy pubs and you will see what I mean. If you have a lazy grand you can have a pistol pretty much the same day. And this at a time when I would advocate for making the compulsory ownership of military semi-automatic weapons pretty much compulsory for lawful citizens as part of any sane defence strategy

16/03/2022: If you have to choose between these two, there really is no choice. Anthony Albanese has really never even run a billy cart with a pig net over it let alone a country. He can also barely speak in case you haven’t noticed! He should be PM? You would have to be kidding: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/03/righto-fact-checkers-lets-hook-into-this.html

15/03/2022: Best $20 Backpack: Modifying Amazon’s G4 Free. Inflation has bitten a little since I wrote the previous post (below) such that now this excellent backpack costs $US 22.99 at Amazon instead of the US$19.99 I paid back in March 2018. That’s inflation at 3.75% per year by the way. Still a lot cheaper than a plus $300 backpack which will do nothing more – or even do it half so well.

Since then I carried mine to (beyond) Dingboche on the Everest Base Camp trail – and many other places besides – though our travels have been somewhat curtailed recently like everyone else’s by covid, or at least its restrictions.

You can see in this post EBC Gear List me carrying mine just outside Pangboche over 5 km up in the sky. The backpack carried everything we needed for a ten day walking trip (including rain gear, spare clothes, survival, satellite communication (2) cooking, sleeping and shelter equipment (for -20C temperatures). It weighed a little over 6 kg. Della’s was nearer 5kg. Almost no food and minimal water. You can buy it on the way And was outstandingly comfortable.

I hardly noticed I was carrying it (at 70+ years old) though my worn out knee was ‘killing me’ back then – which is why I had it replaced last month. It had been causing me significant pain for nearly a decade now. This used to be called ‘manning up’ and was considered a virtue. See I Kneed You

15/03/2022: Thank goodness Zachary Rolfe has been acquitted of shooting a mad dog. He should never have been charged in the first place. What do people think we have police for? So they can just stand aside and watch crazed idiots maim and injure people – including fellow policemen? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-14/nt-police-association-rolfe-not-guilty-independent-investigation/100905574

15/03/2022: An interesting speculation – one thing is sure: most weather has a natural cause. Haven’t seen a blue moon or a ‘year without a summer’ for a while as were caused by previous mighty eruptions: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/did-volcanic-dust-from-hunga-tonga-cause-flooding-in-australia/

Cause and Effect are wonderful: The eruption of the Indonesian island of Tambora in 1816 plunged the world into ‘darkness’ for around a year, causing massive crop failures, the year without a summer, and widespread starvation in Europe for example. It also brought us blood-red sunsets and ‘blue moons’ on account of all the red dust in the sky. Also surprisingly it brought us the wonderful novel ‘Frankenstein’ on account of Mary Wolstencraft (Shelley) having to stay indoors all summer due to the colder than normal weather - and needing something to do!

15/03/2022: Prospero : “O brave new world That has such people in't!” https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/transgender-serial-killer-shopped-99-cent-store-murder-victims-dismembered-leg-video/

15/03/2022: Three days’ training and then off to war! I know you will say, ‘This will never work’ but you should remember that the boys who saved us at Kokoda were taught to fire .303s on the ships sailing up to Moresby, yet then they stopped the toughest most experienced jungle fighters in the world who had overrun trained soldiers all over SE Asia. One thing is sure, you will never win a war unless you have soldiers who are willing to die. If you have sufficient numbers of them you will win. There are lessons about this from recent Russian history for example (which Putin ought to have remembered). Napoleon’s and Hitler’s invasions met vast numbers of (ill-equipped) Russians who were willing to die. They died in dreadful numbers, but the invaders died too – and failed. Both Napoleon and Hitler lost whole armies, and ultimately their empires too: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60724560

Mind you they are in dire straights and may well lose: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/clear-situation-ukraine-desperate-video-week-ago-getting-worse-zelensky-hanging/

14/03/2022: Zpacks Solo Plex Tent: This morning I received an ad for this tent on Facebook (as you do). Zpack Plex Solo Tent. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, they say. I’m sure this is not the case here but this tent is so, so , like my original Deer Hunter’s Tent which evolved from my Tyvek Solo Fire Shelter that the similarities are eerie – and at the time (last century?) nothing like this existed.

Of course this is most likely because the laws of physics/geometry are immutable so that (eventually) you find there really is only one way to do any thing. I did however (originally) post the design, measurements and instructions (on my old website) then deleted them as I realized: 1. I might want to commercialise them in future and 2. Someone else might do so first.However, no doubt they can be found on the Wayback Machine.

I notice Six Moon Designs have a similarly designed tent so it is probably just ‘parallel evolution’. They are welcome to my design now anyway, as Della long since decided ‘we’ would not be launching any new business ventures, but just enjoy life instead – and she’s the boss, as in most homes I’m sure.

I am not so keen on Dyneema as Joe is (though I understand he has made it his trademark material). It is (slightly) lighter (at from .48 oz) than the best silnylon materials (Ripsopbytheroll’s .77oz/yd2) but I am not convinced that the very slight weight advantages are worth the risk of using such very delicate materials. That being said, it is enormously easier to repair with sticky tape! It is tricky to cut and sew,but Joe has been doing it so long he has no doubt worked out all the ‘wrinkles’ in doing it.

A very slight hole in the plastic film covering is very hard to find and spot though. Non-woven dyneema material does also tend to ‘shred’ away with use , something I am not very fond of. I have had this happen with a number of packs which if they had been made from a slightly heavier woven fabric would have lasted several times as long. You are paying very big money for this special material (something like $25 a yard – and it is narrower) as compared with $5-7 a yard for (‘ordinary’) silnylon.

14/03/2022: Putin’s crossing the Rubicon was an enormous financial mistake – but not just for Russia. I said this before he made the move and it is certainly playing out. Ukraine was (economically) worthless to Russia. This is bad news for Russian housewives, some of whom are too young to remember queuing for empty shelves. Unfortunately for the rest of us it is bad news too as shortages, supply chains and prices ramp up. Many of you are too young too to remember the stagflation of the 70’s and etc. If you have not already got your debt under control do so now. If long-term fixed interest home loans are still available get one. If not, sell now and buy something you really can afford. (note my yesterday’s post about home ownership). Plant a veggie garden. Sell your new car and buy a 90s era mechanical vehicle which you can fix yourself – a Land Rover would be a good choice. Learn to hunt. Tough times are likely coming: https://www.commentary.org/noah-rothman/russians-wanted-the-soviet-union-back-they-got-it/

14/03/2022: Africa’s ‘Great Green Wall’. I haven’t been there but I suspect this is a swindle – as with so much green bull. Because of an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere over the last little while there has been an enormous mushrooming of greenery world-wide - more than the area of two Australia’s intoto (as seen by NASA satellites). I have posted about this before (eg 07/11/2021). There is no need to plant trees massively when they are sprouting all over the place even more massively – but if it makes you feel good… https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/africas-great-green-wall-begins-rise

14/03/2022: Imagine warning that having a nuclear war might cause a climate problem – are we back to the ‘Nuclear Winter’ scenario which we were all supposed to fear back in the 70s: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/the-atlantic-warns-that-nuclear-war-is-a-climate-problem-and-you-thought-bombs-were-ok/

14/03/2022: President Trump is just great – I just can’t wait to see him back in the White House for another six years come November: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/03/president-trump-biden-is-crawling-around-the-globe-begging-for-oil-from-saudi-arabia-iran-venezuala.html

13/03/2022: This is as true today as it was in 1854: "Most men are needlessly poor all of their lives because they think they must have such a house as their neighbors have." Henry David Thoreau, 'Walden’ - one of my favourite books. You can still build a small modest house yourself for perhaps $20K. Also so far as I know the ‘minimum’ house is still only a bit over 2 squares ie 25 square metres which should not cost more than about $5K. I have been working on designs for wilderness accommodation (for four) which are much smaller than this (around 6 square metres) and well under $500. I will be posting my designs soon. Of course you have to find a block of land too – blocks still exist out there for under $40K, some even under $30K. Some of these are quite large and have power and water. The one at McMahons Creek looks nice: https://www.realestate.com.au/buy/property-land-between-0-50000-in-vic/list-1 NB There are still probably ways to get your hands on some land for less than this – as Thoreau did after all. We (now) have a very big house (it grew over the years to over 200 square metres plus verandahs) but I doubt it cost us much more than $40K. I would think I could still build it today for under $100K.

13/03/2022: When they thaw Walt’s head out and bring him back to life – it can’t be long now – there will be big changes at Disney World.

13/03/2022: It is coming. Beware: You don’t know what ‘cancel culture’ means until they cancel your credit card and ID card: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/coming-to-a-civilization-near-you-the-totalitarians-wet-dream-a-central-bank-digital-currency/

13/03/2022: This could very easily get worse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ4-vqO0oQ4&t=97s

12/03/2022: If you are a patriotic Australian who doesn’t want to part with too much of your hard-earned to outfit yourself, try these folks. I am looking very smart at present and for about 2/3rds of the cost of local stores. This is all good gear too which employs Aussies and will last. The King Gee Cool Work Trousers in a super tough ripstop cotton come in a beautiful green (as well as black, blue and khaki) for example for A$56. Cheaper and more durable than any pair of jeans: https://everythingaustralian.com.au/

12/03/2022: A (climactic) voice of sanity: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/09/wuwt-contest-winner-professional-2nd-place-is-there-really-a-climate-crisis/

12/03/2022: They work for us – that’ll be the day: https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/33561

12/03/2022: Whoa! Let him walk home or see if Elon can fetch him? The pronouns are more important anyways, surely? https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/03/11/russia-might-abandon-a-u-s-astronaut-on-iss-but-nasa-is-worried-about-pronouns-n1565829

12/03/2022: The same people who tried to hide the truth about Pfizer vaccines (1223 died during the 3 months ‘trial’ - to ‘prove’ it safe) also tried to hide the origins of the virus (probably because they had a part in it). Now they try to hide the truth about Ukrainian bio-labs (probably have a part in that too). I am so over this wicked obfuscation and obscurantism. The ‘information revolution’ was supposed to be about ‘free speech’ or freedom of information anyway – but the ‘black hats’ are (currently) winning. This is a simply awful situation. I suspect it will eventually lead to (worse) authoritarianism or a revolution. Hard to know which of those is worse too. Whatever happened to the Australia I grew up in which was nothing like any of this – though you may make fun of it? I just want my country (my world) back, please. I begin to understand why older people sometimes say they are tired of living. That is not what they mean at all. They are just tired of what their world has become. Some links: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/not-informed-no-consent-1200-people-died-in-the-first-3-months-of-pfizer-vax/ So, the US now admits (under oath) Ukraine really do have secret bio-weapons labs: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/surreal-fake-russian-claims-of-bioweapons-labs-not-so-fake/ The plot thickens: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/surreal-fake-russian-claims-of-bioweapons-labs-not-so-fake/ Maybe watch the doco. (The Russians are once again claiming to have found lots of American bio-labs). Nothing is ever the way it seems in geopolitics: https://rumble.com/vwxxi8-ukraine-on-fire.html Can it get any more surreal than this: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/breaking-exclusive-hunter-biden-firm-rosemont-seneca-invested-firm-tied-ukrainian-biolabs/

Tucker’s Take – yes, it is ominous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2cwGscanAg&t=284s

11/03/2022: Just wow – if only they had found it twenty years ago when maybe 1-2 of the survivors was still alive: https://endurance22.org/endurance-is-found

11/03/2022: This is democracy? Any way the two main parties can lock you out of voting for someone else they will use. A ‘plague on both your houses’: https://www.rebelnews.com/liberal_democrats_lose_high_court_bid_but_lib_dems_march_onward

11/03/2022: And there goes Duckduckgo too. The Ministry of Truth wins again: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/03/ceo-says-duckduckgo-manipulating-search-results-to-down-rank-russian-disinformation.html

11/03/2022: People - for God’s sake! I’m sorry: it’s just so sexist: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/03/kamala-harris-the-future-of-our-world-is-being-built-by-women-and-girls.html

10/03/2022: That time of year again – ‘The Fight Between Carnival and Lent’, Pieter Bruegels: https://giorgiomagnanensi.com/wp-content/uploads/pieter-bruegel_1559-1559_pieter-bruegel-the-elder-the-fight-between-carnival-and-lent.jpg

10/03/2022: The awful game of ‘marriage chicken’ - and the dismal future feminists have created for themselves (and men): https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/the-game-of-marriage-chicken/

10/03/2022: It was not always thus – I am not suggesting we go back to this. One (wonderful) wife is all I need: https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success

10/03/2022: The ‘truth’ about the Ukraine – is there ever any truth? Is there ever a war we did not have to have? I am reminded of the Boer War in my grandfather’s time (I have a photo of him proudly in uniform for it). What was that all about? Both sides (it seems to me) were the same people. After the British ‘went away’ they decided to ‘bury’ their differences in a ‘Union’ of SA which might have included a very much expanded SA if things had gone differently and been more (economically) beneficial for all of Southern Africa. I don’t know. I do know that people are not necessarily ‘ready’ for ‘democracy’ as we style it ie one person = one vote - & etc. We do not have that in Oz (yet) anyway given that a Tasmanian vote (for eg) is worth more than ten NSW votes. Earning or qualifying for the franchise is still an important moral point which we largely ignore (at our peril). One thing is sure, war is enormously destructive and only allows someone else (the true enemy?) to build up strength while you ‘squabble’, which is no doubt what is happening during the current conflict. China, Iran etc become much more dangerous and ‘we’ lose the opportunity to form a ‘common front’ against them: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/heres_the_truth_on_ukraine_as_far_as_i_can_tell.html

09/03/2022: Could Russia be losing in the Ukraine? They lost in Afghanistan remember. “Destroy Putin Now”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJrPccGpP08

09/03/2022: Strapless Backpack: I have been thinking along these lines too (just a thought at present) but my ‘solution’ was more a U-shape (like carrying a bag of grain on your shoulders). The hobo’s swag is another example I suppose. This one looks a bit complicated. However, the point is good – one should try to carry the load perched on ones callipygous bottom - as the Bushmen (or women) do. Packs need to be shaped more to fit in to the curve of the spine (the lordosis – two new words for you, perhaps) more, as Mountain Laurel Designs packs are shaped to. I will be making myself a new pack sometime in the future which incorporates this idea, and also the enormous improvement of the horse collar over the yoke (which I suspect most backpacks have not realized yet): https://www.noshoulderstraps.com/

09/03/2022: I love this poem (much as I hate the war that stole the poet from us!) I so agree with the sentiment. It is the small acts of conservation count most. We have an archway I constructed 20+ years ago harbours many fine birds who are maybe our friends. The wrens and antechinus love the blackberries I labour to destroy. The pardalotes find a home in a raw bulldozer cut on the hillside. The sea eagles nest in the open cut, finding the cliffs to their liking. The peregrine sees the Station stacks as merely an eyrie. The whistling kites hunt the ‘pest’ tilapia in the Pondage. Marsh warblers sing from the cumbungi in the roadside drains. The thornbills love spiders in our old sheds. Many birds collect our sheep’s cast wool for their nests…life will find a way: we do not need vast National Parks to destroy nature with vicious wildfires. Such ‘conservation’ is folly:

Fifty Faggots: Edward Thomas 1878-1917

There they stand, on their ends, the fifty faggots

That once were underwood of hazel and ash

In Jenny Pink's copse. Now, by the hedge

Close packed, they make a thicket fancy alone

Can creep through with the mouse and wren. Next spring

A blackbird or robin will nest there,

Accustomed to them, thinking they will remain

Whatever is for ever to a bird:

This Spring it is too late; the swift has come.

'Twas a hot day for carrying them up:

Better they will never warm me, though they must

Light several Winters' fires. Before they are done

The war will have ended, many other things

Have ended, maybe, that I can no more

Foresee or more control than robin and wren.

09/03/2022: Gold is shooting up – time to reach for it, and iodine (for radiation sickness)? https://goldprice.org/

09/03/2022: We need to understand to what extent we are still being obfuscated by the legacy of Herbert Marcuse: “The prepackaged opinions and talking points of political camps, both left and right, are not thought. True thought, rather, is a journey whose destination is unknown. Everything I write wills itself as a step on that journey, a journey that considers nothing too small, and nothing too great, as an object of our sightseeing, a journey where the posture of a statue or the detail in a façade make us pause and look, just as much as do the demise of armies and the rise and fall of civilizations. If you refuse to look at certain sights you come across on that journey—no matter how ugly and hateful they may appear to your imperfect being—then you will quickly get lost on the road and dizzy yourself in a labyrinth of solipsism.” A very thought-provoking and well-written essay: https://quillette.com/2022/03/02/herbert-marcuse/

08/03/2022: This is an otter fisherman. Because they exist it lends credence to the ‘legend’ of wild otters in NZ, a creature the Maori also had a name for (though no-one has yet captured a photograph of one). They have (allegedly) been seen even recently near Tautapere for example. However that may turn out, I feel that there is no doubt Chinese sailors explored the East Coast of Australia (and NZ) long, long ago and that archaeological evidence is out there. Waiting. Even longer ago I suspect Australopithecus (and the like) early men most likely found there way here half a million years or so ago. ‘First Nations’ indeed! What a turn up for our understanding of prehistory their remains will make. They have been found already on utterly unlikely islands in Indonesia (c 800,000BC) where they could only have made their way if they were ocean travelers! https://www.facebook.com/bbcearth/videos/536017841085513

Here is a possible example: https://www.facebook.com/bbcearth/videos/536017841085513

https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-technology/ancient-navigation-00963?fbclid=IwAR0q0xpwHIKcXV-zn3CUNgmVoq72AgpP4Z4Ot4N_Pz7Xu6TIA25fZbBIdQk#!bywGL1

08/03/2022: The Modern Headhunter: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/box-human-heads-stolen-truck-denver/

This has been happening in Melbourne recently too – what is going on?

08/03/2022: Maybe it will turn out to be a different ‘great reset’: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/two-weeks-of-war-undoes-thirty-years-of-energy-propaganda-everyone-wants-fossil-fuels/

08/03/2022: I have been wrong before. Maybe soon we will be talking about a Ukrainian invasion of Russia? https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/russia-ukraine-conflict-live-updates-fighting-ramps-up-as-invasion-enters-12th-day/news-story/45c9a5c9666f1ee992c81dda4e306f0b

This is how it’s done: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/how_technology_has_saved_ukraine.html

07/03/2022: Why are we destroying our men: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/2020-update-for-every-100-girls-part-i/

07/03/2022: Step Back in Time – a ‘Told You So’ moment. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin warned that if Senator Barack Obama were elected president, his “indecision” and “moral equivalence” may encourage Russia’s Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine’: https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2014/02/28/Flashback-Palin-Mocked-in-2008-for-Warning-Putin-May-Invade-Ukraine-if-Obama-Elected-President/

07/03/2022: Make the Nimbys pay for their own boondoggles. Absolutely. I wonder how many young Greta followers would choose to opt out of paying more tax? https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/05/british-government-young-people-should-pay-for-climate-action/

07/03/2022: Stop – before it is too late! “Reality -- like truth and goodness -- is not fungible. Whether we wish it to be or not. We did not ask to be born. None of us. No living being. No one ever arranged their own birth. That is the truth, a fact. Impossible. Yet here we are. Therefore, it is simply impossible that our rights come from other humans or living things. Or that reality comes from Mark Zuckerberg.” (‘Fungible’ = ‘interchangeable’) https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/the_metaverse_artificial_intelligence_and_the_assault_on_reality.html

06/03/2022: China’s ‘defence’ spending up another 7% - some of you will remember the dysphemism ‘Pig Iron Bob’ re Menzies’ allowing the sale of iron to Japan pre WW2. We have to just hope that our (record) sales of iron ore to China is not returned in warships, tanks etc in the near future? https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/03/china-announces-massive-military-budget-boost-up-71-to-usd-229-billion-in-2022.html

Fortunately Morrison has already stepped up our defence spending: https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/peta-credlin-australia-must-turbocharge-its-defence-capabilities/news-story/6c70cd7398b348c16fbe2b9dca97f9da

06/03/2022: The Covid Crimes Trials. You can only hope there will be so that the (now) millions unnecessarily killed by covid because of wicked restrictions of cheap effective drugs can receive some justice and monsters like our Dictator Dan can be put to the wall: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/dr-andrew-hill-how-many-people-died-because/

06/03/2022: Whatever happened to this: Article 19 from the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

However, I can see his point: Tommy Robinson, “Russia has banned Facebook. Meaning Twitter, the BBC and now Facebook gone out of the country. The world would be a better place if everyone followed suit”

06/03/2022: The Citroen Ami a $12,000 EV (unsuited for most roads) – how this is better than a Suzuki A lot is beyond me. Ah, the future…almost glad I won’t be around to see it: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/the-citroen-ami-mini-ev-the-covered-mobility-scooter/

05/03/2022: Time for a good news story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=278&v=PVPyLoYyUVk&feature=emb_title

05/03/2022: Watermelons: I have been saying for years that they are green on the outside and red on the inside – ever since Patrick Moore a Greenpeace founder revealed that the (‘disappearing’) communists took over the ‘environmental’ movement when ‘The Wall’ came down, so long ago now. All that time they have been taking money from the (ex) communists (Putin et al) to destroy the West in every way they could think of, just as ‘fellow travelers’ had been doing amongst us ever since the Bolshevik Revolution (Nov 1917). The enemy within. I know my University days in the 60s were full of them. How many I knocked down with my fists back then, but not enough – and not permanently enough. We let them win. Don’t just think of their ‘environmental’ plans here. Their social (‘marriage equality’, gender identity etc) and economic (welfare, social justice, social housing…) have been just as important - and perfidious. They want a people who are secondary and subservient to ‘The State’. They always have. They are terrified of the idea that the State is a social construct which ‘The People’ implement from time to time for (clearly defined) purposes and ought itself to be secondary and temporary in nature. Primacy is an independent self-sufficient populace going about their own business with as few (external ) rules and controls as possible ie Freedom. They absolutely hate the very idea of freedom. Their money trail and agenda has become clearer in the last little while: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/russian-linked-groups-donated-to-anti-frakking-green-groups-because-they-love-the-planet-right/

05/03/2022: I suspect also that Putin will succeed in Ukraine – whether we like it or not – and I do not like it: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10569141/Putin-NOT-crazy-Russian-invasion-NOT-failing-writes-military-analyst-BILL-ROGGIO.html?utm_source=pocket_mylist

05/03/2022: However, sometimes a cheap (new) weapon can change the outcome of a war. This may also happen with submarine warfare. This was (after all) Howard’s ‘solution’ to making Australia impregnable (with missile defences) thirty years ago: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/03/britishswedish-anti-tank-missiles-a-game-changer-in-defence-of-ukraine.html

04/03/2022: A Balloon Eclipse: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/03/bill-thompsons-celestial-numbers-come-up.html

04/03/2022: What can you do with such people? https://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/crime/queensland-saw-amputation-victim-suffered-an-undiagnosed-medical-condition-family-believe/news-story/2304a58be2dd0a3975a269d380598f57

04/03/2022: Another truly remarkable essay by Lord Monckton which makes so many puzzling evils so much clearer. It has made up my mind on a host of issues, not least which side I should be supporting in the current Ukrainian ‘situation’. A must read. Really: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/03/the-strategic-threat-from-net-zero-emissions/

04/03/2022: Who are the real enemies (of the West?) Surely: the Left, Islam and China are the real biggies. I have wondered whether we should even be on the same side as Putin whom I confess I kind of ‘like’ –anyway in a way I do not like Biden. A decision probably more based on the ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend’ or similar contradictions than any other reasonable process of thought. Don’t know whether he really did ride a bear but he sure looks good in the (photoshopped) images doing it. Just saying: https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/03/is-the-west-cannibalising-itself/

03/03/2022: Andrew Hastie making it clear we should send more than pronouns or pronunciation. I like this guy – can we have him as PM some day. Well, today? https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/03/andrew-hastie-mp-on-sending-australian-ammunition-missiles-to-kill-russians.html

03/03/2022: Apparently when the Russians actually invade it might be time to realise (too late) you might need energy independence – even if you are a Green nut-job - over to you Scotty: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/01/german-green-party-embraces-coal-lng-and-nuclear/

Another way to put it: https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-wests-green-delusions-empowered?utm_source=url&s=r

03/03/2022: Interesting data. BTW: We are triple vaccinated (Astra Zenica) for one reason or another – eg having needed a knee replacement). Covid certainly seems to have slipped from the front page (before we died of boredom instead) but disquiet about mRNA vaccines continues to increase (in the background). Clearly evidence now of long-term DNA effects which were specifically denied possible at the outset. Novavax has now been approved as a booster (if you still want a vaccine): https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/03/01/russia-distraction-uk-gov-revealed-triple-vaccinated-account-9-in-10-covid-deaths/

03/03/2022: Maybe long since time we thought about moving Brisbane – building a city in a swamp was never a good idea anyway surely. It just keeps happening – eg three times in 1893 and worse than today: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/the-devastating-floods-of-brisbane-in-1893/

03/03/2022: Selective Crisis Enhancement (SCE) – we need a new acronym surely? We seem to move or be moved from one ‘crisis’ to another as recently from Covid to the Ukraine. I’m not sure either of them were (worthy) crises) really, but someone (in charge?) is picking these out from the bundle and ordering that they be accentuated as if they were the sole challenge facing humanity – and so that we don’t get to thinking about other things. The folks fighting the war in Mali for example must feel a little left out of this. I might also have been unaware of it too except I was talking to chap at my grandson’s sixth birthday recently who was training soldiers for this conflict, no doubt a worthy cause (though maybe pointless, like most of them). No wonder veterans get to feeling a bit left out when no-one even knows they were fighting (for us/right/etc) in some “s---hole of a county” as Donald Trump styled it, which would probably be better left to its own awful devices anyway! Especially when ‘our ABC’ and other such ‘witch-finders’ seem hell-bent on persecuting then afterwards for perceived nastiness (what soldiers are trained to do after all) they may have performed there.For example: https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/watch-live-tucker-carlson-opening-statement-3/

02/03/2022: You might think the battle for Kiev (Armageddon, Ragnarok, etc, etc) is/are ‘the ultimate battle’, but that accolade must always reserved for the battle for the mind. “That civilisation may not sink, Its great battle lost” as Yeats writes about it in “Long-Legged Fly’ (https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/long-legged-fly/ ) is the ultimate imperative. The role of ‘dissenters’ in underlining this conflict is crucial (and so often ignored/repressed by the media). You do not have to resort to some arcane and difficult text to understand this. I am a lover of the Western (I have to confess). Sometimes this genre has managed to showcase ‘dissent’ better than any other. ‘Friendly Persuasion’ 1956, ‘Sergeant York’ 1941, and ‘High Noon’ 1952 all starring Gary Cooper & ‘Shenandoah’ 1965 starring James Stewart are cases in point. In each case the central character manages to completely challenge the orthodoxy. “No man is my enemy” is the central Quaker meme in ‘Friendly Persuasion’ for example. Perhaps the Ukrainian people will be able to persuade the tanks to stop in a way that the hero of Tienanmen Square did not? Maybe like in ‘Kelly’s Heroes’?

02/03/2022: At least plastic supermarket bags were recyclable but we have rushed into flooding the world with worthless products which are not: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/03/americas-national-renewable-energy-lab-warns-a-tidal-wave-of-wind-and-solar-waste-is-coming/

02/03/2022: Completely agree with Neil Oliver: https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/33178

01/03/2022: This guy was great: Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956): "I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave."

01/03/2022: One thing I notice (and have railed about for years) is that ‘statists’ do seem to believe that the whole ball-game is ‘for the good of the state’ something which we and ours are all just property of - like it was stamped on our bottoms at birth. One thing which really stood out (to me) about 1776 was the Declaration that it was (instead) all about ‘The People’ who could (rightfully) take up arms to remove an unjust government and whose inalienable rights could be removed by such a government but not guaranteed by one. The state needed to be kept within quite narrow circumscribed limits. I still think this is an important watershed moment in history. Government always and everywhere needs to be wound back with power and wealth kept firmly in the hands of The People.

01/03/2022: What is really going on In the Ukraine? I don’t pretend to know but it is likely to be something different than the Big Tech Newspeak junk we are getting from the mainstream media. The Russians seem to avoid killing civilians or widespread destruction for one thing and may be surrounding and negating Ukrainian forces. Putin claimed all along that his intervention was to counter Nato expansionism and Nazi (sic) undemocratic elements within Ukraine. (The ‘Azov Regiment’ do sound pretty sinister). You could read this on eg Infowars but I can’t even paste a link, so who is more into control ? https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/really-going-ukraine-alternative-scenario/

Surely (for example) this ‘news’ story could not be true: https://richardsonpost.com/howellwoltz/25863/putin-destroys-7-u-s-bioweapons-labs-in-ukraine/

01/03/2022: Well Said Andrew Bolt: https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/andrew-bolt/andrew-bolt-ukrainians-are-heroes-to-all-of-us/news-story/389f6056f6f443bbe104e1cbb98d11c5

01/03/2022: The Importance of Men:

28/02/2022: Thank goodness at least the Stock Market is setting new records – I would hate to think the good burghers of Kiev were dying for nothing. Ah, the lovely dividends!

28/02/2022: I have to own one of these: https://www.atiki.shop/products/kinetic-art?st=&fbclid=IwAR1cVv-uuhn706xHsCORB9T1dy70xuLvXEJCSsdpiKM7rEBhTRt2VOlgmbk

PS: The more I look at and think about this object the more I feel that It can't possibly exist. Surely it defies the laws of physics. Once I could have written out the equations ot show this. By the same token someone once said the same thing about whether bumble bees could fly yet I have seen them doing so. Will I have to purchase one to see whether it is a fake - or a new source of energy? You have to click on the link and open it then scroll down to see the video.

A friend of mine (Brett) explains: “This video explains there’s a hidden device in its base

https://youtu.be/Y5dylh2aOiw”

28/02/2022: Knee Update 3: Good to know Putin is better than Hitler (at conquering the Ukraine). Four days (to Kiev) as against two months (Barbarossa) has to be a big improvement. I guess in the future this will become something like a competition – the best contenders will be able to completely crush the Ukraine in 24 hours – or less. Good to know (at least) that folks have been practicing this war so many times for the last few thousand years. I suspect that there is something about having names of six or more syllables which angers people. After being told (boorishly) to ‘love one another’ so many times over the years people are still plenty good at hate. This may be related to my current (non-ambulatory) status – on account of the knee replacement, but I can’s get excited about throwing away any of my numerous lives dying for either the Ukies or the Ruskies. Well, I own that I haven’t much of this life left to throw away at all really. I am more about planning seeing (supposing the knee gets going again – soon, please) whether I can still toddle to some out of the way spot to admire the view and listen to the wind in the trees. I am currently researching (isn’t the internet wonderful?) whether I can use cargo drones or ultralight aircraft to assist me. Once I am chasing Della around the house and yard (soon again I hope) such silly plans will soon evaporate. Meanwhile the sheep are simply adoring the month’s hay we put out for them before the op and have already devoured more than half of it, so plans are afoot to see how this can be replaced without me being able to walk or drive a tractor (Round bales of hay are too heavy for drones and would blow away!)

27/02/2022: Many Ukrainians have (unsurprisingly) not forgotten the Holdomor. There exists an excellent 2019 film about it (eponymously) ‘Mr Jones’. You should steal a copy: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6828390/

27/02/2022: Those of ‘us’ who thought (again and again) we just could not have another war were wrong again – and will continue to be so! If folks think they can have a ‘quick war’ (and win) they will give it a try most every time. Your prayers will do nothing to prevent that. Bullies need to be convinced before they start that they will have neither. This used to be called ‘Defence’. Older people must be reminded of the ‘Phoney War’ period at the beginning of WW2 – let’s hope this is not a repetition. A reminder, real people are dying. I am waiting for major leaders to tell Vlad very loudly to ‘Back Off’ eg ‘Tomorrow we will destroy the Kremlin’.

26/02/2022: What could go wrong: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25333751-700-meet-the-robots-that-can-reproduce-learn-and-evolve-all-by-themselves/

26/02/2022: “The peoples of autocratic countries don’t get to choose their governments; that is their tragedy. The peoples of liberal democracies get a choice, and that is theirs. The fact that the people of the United States have chosen to be led by a geriatric incompetent, at this moment in time, is more than a tragedy for America; it is a tragedy for the entire world” https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/02/1939-revisited/

26/02/2022: The dilemma for the West: you can’t win a geopolitical conflict lasting years or decades with an economy powered intermittently by wind turbines and solar panels: https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2022/02/24/standing_up_to_putin_means_ditching_net-zero_818493.html

26/02/2022:

18/02/2022:

18/02/2022: Harry Cummins make a fine case for why I believe in ‘discrimination’ or ‘discernment’ as I prefer to call it, particularly in relation to immigration but also (for example) in relation to the franchise. ‘No taxation without representation' formed the cornerstone of American democracy you might remember. I would probably prefer to turn that on its head, ie ‘No representation without taxation’ so that you only get to choose who is the government and what the government spends (your) money on if you have contributed (financially) to that government. A very thought-provoking essay anyway: https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/01/the-common-cause-of-china-and-islam/?fbclid=IwAR3RijMTcM2IeC6Sak3AUePXGXeNwHfsDjRfj4O9TZ1imw4slF4RRTAQrqE

18/02/2022: Knee Update #2: I have walked to the toilet and shower (using a walker) and am now all clean and sitting in a chair. All going well so far - and thank you all very much for the kind thoughts and well-wishing. Already planning future hikes - Vic mountains (hopefully by May), Mt Bartle Frere (alternate route) late June, EBC and surrounds late Oct and back to the Dusky (Fiordland, NZ) in Feb/March. An example of where we would like to be: https://www.theultralighthiker.com/2019/11/17/everest-days-1-2-lukla-to-namche-bazar/?fbclid=IwAR1R3V36ZjmJYb0cU-Zq0qKl8MfaiP8uVNkhhuGpmb4ZRtmogowldqcOj1o

17/02/2022: Knee update: Just to let you know that 5 hours after going down to surgery I am siting up in bed and still have ten toes. Time will tell how well all this went. Many thanks for all your good wishes. I will keep you posted,

17/02/2022: Ain’t it the truth: Aussie beer tax slammed as ‘sexist’: https://www.rebelnews.com/aussie_beer_tax_cut_slammed_as_sexist

17/02/2022: If I am a bit quiet for a few days it is because I am in hospital having a knee replacement. Hopefully this gives me a whole new lease on life!

17/02/2022: On the persistence of bad ideas: https://newcriterion.com/issues/2022/2/firing-the-canon

17/02/2022: Terrible news P.J. O’Rourke is dead. Laughter died with him: https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/pj-orourke-passes-away/

‘Eat the Rich’, an example of his greatness: https://www.amazon.com/Eat-Rich-Treatise-Economics-ORourke/dp/0871137607?asin=0871137607&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1

16/02/2022: Why SpaceX is going to dominate air freight: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2022/02/spacex-reusable-rocket-costs-versus-airplanes.html

16/02/2022: The revolution really has begun: 81% of Canadians (already) oppose Trudeau’s response to the trucker protest: https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/32561

Trudeau goes full Nazi: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/02/trudeau-declares-all-truckers-donors-and-honkers-are-terrorists-seize-their-bank-accounts/

16/02/2022: Notice how the Greens and the Left’s vote is collapsing. Conservatives are several points ahead: https://www.advanceaustralia.org.au/adam_bandt_s_greens_circle_the_drain_as_voter_support_collapses

16/02/2022: Meanwhile Russia is withdrawing its troops from the Ukrainian border – there was zero chance they were going to start a war in Europe anyway when their real enemy is China. The West should be allied with Russia against Islam and China.

Seems that news was highly exaggerated!

15/02/2022: This pub survived the Black Death but could not survive covid lunacy. Let that be a lesson to you all: https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/oldest-pub-in-britain-closes-after-1229-years/

15/02/2022: The truckers have brought about a massive change in public opinion in just a month. This indicates the potential for a ‘revolution’ at the polls here in May where it is still possible that a coalition of (mainly new) commonsense elements (some splintering away from the main parties) but including Lib Dems, One Nation United Australia etc could still change Australia permanently (for the better). I’m sure I am not the only person who is utterly tired of the politics we have had forced on us for so long by the two main parties, bureaucrats, unionists, pressure groups & etc: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/02/more-canadians-support-truckers-freedom-so-trudeau-may-launch-national-emergencies-act/

15/02/2022: What do greens really want? We must not bow to this sort of climate madness: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/02/amid-energy-crisis-uk-government-uses-regulatory-death-curse-on-massive-local-gas-industry/

15/02/2022: Last Week the “Experts” Admitted Lockdowns Did Not Reduce Mortality Rates — Now They Admit Masking Was Mostly Worthless: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/wow-last-week-experts-admitted-lockdowns-not-reduce-mortality-rates-now-admit-masking-mostly-worthless/

May be useful advice: https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/heres-how-to-detox-from-the-covid-spike-protein-from-the-jab-or-the-virus/

14/02/2022: Who needs Netflix, etc? The Internet Archive has thousands of fine movies and TV shows for streaming (without ads) for free: https://archive.org/details/feature_films

14/02/2022: Useful Instructable: How to open a locked door without a key: https://www.popularmechanics.com/home/a25318691/how-open-locked-door/

14/02/2022: Well said Joel – everyone needs to step back from trying to steal votes from the extreme Left. Instead these evil forces need to be rejected and exorcised: https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/labor-mp-says-party-is-better-off-in-opposition-than-doing-deal-with-greens-in-event-of-hung-parliament/news-story/7a63587e1ddaed778ea38c20917bb051

You should try to understand the cost of green lunacy: https://www.advanceaustralia.org.au/here_s_the_cost_of_a_labor_greens_government

14/02/2022: When you are punished for doing a public service: https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/i-have-no-problem-with-this-murder/

13/02/2022: Nature is awesome: https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/massive-swarm-of-birds-plummet-to-the-earth-dead-very-bizarre-video/

13/02/2022: Amid the witch-hunting of our greatest warrior and hero Ben Roberts-Smith VC please try to understand why we have a military, (Clue: It is not to push some bizarre woke agenda): https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/a-retired-marine-3-star-general-explains-critical-military-theory/ar-AATHzEt?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531

13/02/2022: What if a revolution had already started and no-one even noticed (because the media are part of the system). Remember how the collapse of the USSR took us all by surprise? Is that what is happening in Ottawa (and now Canberra)? David Evans, “The great political realignment continues. The ruling class have coalesced — with the establishment right joining the bureaucratic left. They are all college-educated (but not too bright, you understand), and they love well paid government jobs and government money, and being aligned to the dominant political ideology so they can name-call anyone else and dismiss them without having to actually engage with what they are saying — without having to actually think. But they left behind most of society. We can’t all be overpaid non-productive consumers of government money.” https://joannenova.com.au/2022/02/trudeau-is-panicking-its-the-biggest-human-rights-protest-in-a-generation/

13/02/2022: A huge crowd in Canberra. I cannot recall ever seeing anything of this magnitude in Oz: https://www.rebelnews.com/australias_biggest_convoy_descends_on_the_capital When the first Russian Revolution occurred it was just a massive upwelling of popular feeling which ushered in a democratic change. No-one was in charge. It was later that the communists took over from that democratic government. Much the same thing happened earlier in France.

12/02/2022: Parasocial – a new word for you today. Apparently it’s about illusory relationships. I suspect lots of folks have these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction

12/02/2022: You betcha – no such thing as a free lunch: https://www.city-journal.org/free-lunch-economics

12/02/2022: We have often said, ‘But it ain’t the Black Death’ but now it turns out the Black Death wasn’t either: https://scitechdaily.com/black-death-mortality-not-as-widespread-as-long-thought-bubonic-plague-had-no-impact-on-parts-of-europe/

11/02/2022: The remarkable Anthony Hopkins: https://newcatallaxy.blog/2022/02/10/wolfmanoz-at-the-movies-8/

11/02/2022: The debate about euthanasia quickly slips from (not) forcing people to live with intolerable conditions to forcing them to end their lives because (such) lives are ‘worthless’. Many would have seen Helen Keller’s whole life for example as ‘not worth living’ (if it were them, they think) but she and millions of others do not agree: https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/01/the-political-shifts-that-embrace-euthanasia/

11/02/2022: Innumeracy and ‘aboriginal genocide’: https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/01/aborigines-and-the-question-of-genocide/

10/02/2022: Wild surfing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZoPR4pCwm0&t=66s

10/02/2022: Election fraud. Just one state. As if it was not enough that the Arizona audit found 700,000 dubious votes there are over 700,000 votes lacking any chain of custody: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/huge-maricopa-county-investigation-finds-additional-740000-ballots-no-documented-chain-custody/ Election officials have been caught deleting records: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/exclusive-election-fraud-video-maricopa-county-election-workers-caught-red-handed-deleting-archived-files-server-delivery-auditors/ Meanwhile Rep Finchen introduces a bill to decertify the election results: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/breaking-big-arizona-state-rep-mark-finchem-introduces-resolution-set-aside-decertify-three-2020-county-elections/

10/02/2022: World’s most massive experiment - mRNA Vaccines just became even more worrying: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/02/spike-protein-still-being-produced-60-days-later-after-mrna-vax/ PS: We have just had our third shot of Astra Zenica.

PS: Astra-Zenica has (at last) been approved a a booster this morning, so there is a choice. Soon Novavax will join it.

09/02/2022: Tali Karng - a Gippsland Gem: A friend of mine (Leanne) walked there last weekend reminding me of our trip there twelve years' ago, not long after the 2007 fire. The bush has changed a fair bit since then. She kindly shared her photos with me, so I have been able to construct this photo essay about the trip for your edification.

Leanne started her trip (as many do) at the McFarlane Saddle on the Moroka Rd and finished at the Wellington River Bridge. She took three relaxing days for the 29 km trip. Walking in this direction makes most of the trip flat or downhill. It is approximately 12 km in to Tali and a further 17 km to the Wellington River Bridge (including 16 river crossings).

Many people just walk up from the Wellington Bridge (or the B1 Track - shorter) and back again as Della and I did. If you are young and fit you can walk and back from the B1 in a day though why you would be in such a hurry I can't imagine!

It is only a thirty or so years ago that we used to drive in along what were then 4WD (logging) tracks deer hunting. I have even been in there in my old (1981) Subaru Leone circa 1984 with my foxhounds. It is (alas) just a pile of rust in the paddock today (and the beloved hounds but a memory) but on that day I towed a Toyota Land Cruiser through a couple of difficult sections with it. Read More: https://www.theultralighthiker.com/2022/02/08/tali-karng-a-gippsland-gem/

09/02/2022: Women (and men) just became redundant: https://interestingengineering.com/an-ai-robot-nanny-will-care-for-human-embryos-in-artificial-wombs

09/02/2022: The ‘nuclear family’ was a mistake? An interesting read: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuclear-family-was-a-mistake/605536/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR2smYKHi_Ud2csYitXDLm954scVyE3hsHEdgR9AG2ZfW2egbKi2ZCdDJjc

09/02/2022: Some ‘religion’ where it is ‘honourable’ to murder women: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10488629/Iranian-husband-carries-severed-head-wife-decapitating-honour-killing.html

08/02/2022: Men have been boss in the Orkneys for a long while: https://scitechdaily.com/ancient-dna-rewrites-the-history-of-prehistoric-orkney-britains-ancient-capital/

08/02/2022: Seems like the Shoshone have busy been in Wyoming for quite some time: https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2022/01/31/novel_dating_method_yields_new_discovery_about_north_american_rock_art_814419.html

08/02/2022: Another great green idea: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/germany_to_raze_a_1000yearold_forest_in_the_name_of_going_green.html

08/02/2022: From Anon:

Dear Complier,

We’ve met, but you probably don’t recognise me. You may remember referring to me as a “conspiracy theorist”, “racist”, “sexist”, “bigot”, or “anti-vaxxer”, but in fact I am none of the above, and much more to you than you realise. I am your friend, family member, colleague, lover, acquaintance and neighbour. I am everywhere, but I don’t self-righteously disclose where exactly.

You’re wearing a mask so I can’t see the scorn set on your lips, or even your smile (if it’s there). Your eyes are visible, but in them I see only compliance, fear, shame and defeat. I don’t judge you, as I know you are a victim. You have been efficiently conditioned, the result of which has left you stripped bare of self-confidence, dignity, power and compassion.

Your only strength is to attack those unwilling to join you in obedience. It’s okay – I don’t feel mad – I feel sad for you. I will allow you to direct your fear at me and I will accept it, because the battle I am fighting is for you as well as me. It’s for your children and grandchildren, as well as mine.

You and I both had a choice to make, and I decided to fight for freedom. You submitted instantly, and attempted to shame, intimidate and coerce me into the same, becoming outraged at my independence and my belief in “my body, my choice”. You disagree with my striving for a fair and just society, free from fraud and deception. You call me a “fascist” for arguing against government overreach. Do you see this irony?

While you continue to angrily comply, to follow those who have continuously lied to you, I will continue to push back. I will continue to value my autonomy and I will use my strength to free us both from the path you are blindly walking down.

One day you will see how much your compliance almost cost us, and hopefully you will see that I was never your enemy. I look forward to this day, and I will celebrate it with you. Until then, I will be here propping you up and preventing you from falling, anonymously of course.

Sincerely, Anon.

07/02/2022: Let’s break the cycle:

07/02/2022: Is this the first chink in the narrative? Will there come a rush to say, ‘It wasn’t us’. For example here in Vic literally thousands of people have died because Dictator Dan banned simple safe effective treatments for covid which would have saved many of them (instead of promoting them). https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/failed-danish-newspaper-apologizes-not-questioning-governments-covid-19-narrative-video/

06/02/2022: “I did but see her passing by…” a happy Jubilee to our wonderful Queen today: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/the-monarchy/2022/02/long-live-our-platinum-queen/

06/02/2022: Gobelki Tepe continues to rewrite history: https://allthatsinteresting.com/gobekli-tepe

06/02/2022: The purpose of education: https://www.city-journal.org/html/self-reliance-vs-self-esteem-12493.html

06/02/2022: Ivermectin now shown to cure cancer: https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/ivermectin-has-powerful-anti-cancer-effects-study/

05/02/2022: Freedom Protesters in Canberra today – don’t you wish you were there with them: https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/32154

05/02/2022: I don’t think it is fine to shoot people for jumping the queue, or spitting on the footpath...Shooting is so noisy (and frightens small children and horses. Garrotting is fine). The essence of all crime is folks who forget the ‘golden rule’ (had they ever heard of it? Viz: ‘Do unto others…’). ie Folks who think they are more important than other folks, so that it is only the latter who should stand in line! People need to learn to ‘keep their place’; if they do not, then ‘off with their heads’!

05/02/2022: The Roman, Scipio Aemilianus. His name is hardly a by-word today – yet it should be. During the course of the Third Punic War he was famous for repeating, ‘Carthage Must Be Destroyed!’ which they did most efficaciously when they won, executing all the menfolk, enslaving all the women and children, razing the city to the ground, ploughing salt into the fields & etc. Not much sign of Algeria resuming super-power status today. Less well known is that when he returned to Rome he expeditiously carried out his next plan. It had rankled him that bankers had grown fat lending money at interest to enable the pursuit of the war. So far as he was concerned this was a breach of a patriotic duty. (Usury, which is what this used excellently to be called was punishable by death right up to a couple of centuries ago!) His motion in the Senate on Day 1 of the peace was that they ALL be put to death (by garrotting) that very day. And they were! We need more of Scipio’s ‘remedies today: To bankers I would add: lawyers, insurers, facilitators…

05/02/2022: Natural immunity is still better than anything we have engineered: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/02/natural-immunity-still-strong-and-durable-20-months-later-no-boosters-needed/

Meanwhile they are conducting random covid tests because 90% of folk have no idea they have it: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/02/not-enough-sick-people-to-keep-the-covid-machine-running-now-its-random-covid-tests-for-more-victims.html

05/02/2022: Maybe you think you should hate plastics but you are going to love this stuff: https://scitechdaily.com/mit-engineers-create-the-impossible-new-material-that-is-stronger-than-steel-and-as-light-as-plastic/

04/02/2022: And I thought lizards laid eggs! https://www.facebook.com/abccanberra/videos/691947541798182

04/02/2022: Chernobyl Wildlife: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaUNhqnpiOE

04/02/2022: The people are winning against covid tyranny in multiple countries. Hold the line peeps: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/02/major-win-uk-govt-backs-down-on-mandatory-jabs-for-healthworker-jabs/

04/02/2022: A mysterious cancer cure: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/a-cancer-treatment-makes-leukemia-vanish-but-creates-more-mysteries/ar-AATpelW?ocid=msedgntp

04/02/2022: 2000 Mules: It’s normal in elections for one person to make 53 trips to 20 drop boxes…and this is only the tip of the iceberg in the most fraudulent election in ‘democratic’ history which must be undone lest the West is lost: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/02/2000-mules-its-normal-in-elections-for-one-person-to-make-53-trips-to-20-drop-boxes/

03/02/2022: “Koalas don’t need saving. Indeed, they are in much higher numbers across a much wider area today than when Europeans arrived in Australia”: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2022/01/the-great-koala-extinction-that-never-happens/

03/02/2022: Official (office of national statistics) figures that over the last two years 17371 people in the UK actually died ‘from covid’ as compared to ‘with covid’ ie about 10% of the total normally attributed to it. This is no more than would ‘normally’ die ‘from’ seasonal flu over the same time period. It also begs the question of how many might have been ‘saved’ if readily available proven prevention and treatment had been applied (instead of in some case banned). The average age of these folks who died was mid 80s, ie above the ‘normal’ average age of death. This leads one to question how many years of life have been saved by ‘health’ and economic measures compared with the cost in years of life expended (lockdowns etc). Clearly you could hardly argue that more than a year of life was ‘lost’ by every person who died - or 17371 life years, but just as clearly locking up 70 million people for perhaps a year ‘cost’ 70 million life years a ratio of over 4,000 years of life expended for every year of life ‘saved’. Similarly if you divide the economic costs by the ‘life years’ saved it just doesn’t add up. https://www.harrogate-news.co.uk/2022/01/23/ons-data-shows-17371-covid-19-deaths-with-no-underlying-conditions-from-a-total-of-152872-recorded-as-died-within-28-days-of-testing-positive/ NB: I strongly suspect if these ratios hold up for Australia we have in fact lost only approx 300 (not 3,000) 85+ year olds to covid in two years so probably costing us at most 300 life-years. We have lost more lives in total and orders of magnitude more life years to suicide due to the lockdowns. Here in Victoria (alone) we locked several million people down for approx 2/3rds of a year, so several million life years wasted in Oz altogether. Probably about half the lives lost could have been saved by making cheap Vitamins and Zinc available pre infection and Hydroxychlroquine and/or Ivermectin & etc after at a cost of perhaps $100 or less per capita. Instead our governments have squandered somewhere above a trillion dollars or $40,000 per capita, a debt which will take a long while to pay off, if ever – and nothing left for a real emergency round the corner. This is economic (and health) innumeracy on a vast scale, not to mention the tyranny!

03/02/2022: The Rape of Britain – this is what ‘diversity’ politics have created in the UK (and probably in a city near you too): https://gettr.com/streaming/pra8hy1aa0

03/02/2022: This would be so nice – bring it on: https://newatlas.com/medical/osteoarthritis-pain-treatment-molecular-pathway/

02/02/2022: A dog who can teach us a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhvwYZuBttQ

02/02/2022: “Since (just) 2019,there have been over 350 peer-reviewed scientific papers published showing no warming in the modern era and/or much warmer temperatures than today when CO2 levels ranged from 180 to 280 ppm” Remember Einstein’s observation, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong”: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/31/105-more-non-global-warming-non-hockey-stick-temperature-records-added-to-the-database-in-2021/

02/02/2022: Just imagine if people did not want to buy woke propaganda: https://pjmedia.com/culture/matt-margolis/2022/01/28/dc-comics-bisexual-climate-change-fighting-superman-is-kryptonite-to-sales-n1553849

02/02/2022: It is long since time we started to build nuclear power stations, stopped scrapping coal but ditched useless and costly ‘green’ energy. The woke left are destroying us. Fight back like the Canadian truckies are showing us how to do: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/02/suddenly-the-world-shifts-back-to-nuclear/ PS: I notice the socialists are condemning the workers of the world for uniting!

01/02/2022: Maybe you thought it was whalers who nearly drove the blue whale to extinction: https://gizmodo.com/horrific-observations-confirm-that-orcas-feed-on-blue-w-1848442007

01/02/2022: If these side-effects of MRNA vaccines are general the cost will be appalling – and our governments mandated this stuff. NB “The increase in medical reports didn’t happen during the first year of Covid, only after the vaccination program was started. In other words, Covid itself didn’t cause this”: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/whistleblowers-reveal-dod-medical-data-showing-military-cancer-diagnoses-tripled-since-rollout-experimental-vaccines-along-10x-increase-neurological-disorders-near-5x/ & https://joannenova.com.au/2022/02/game-changer-us-military-data-shows-shockingly-high-vaccination-injuries/

01/02/2022: Elon Musk, “ if the government had the mandate of the people there would (not) be a significant counter-protest. There is not, therefore they do not…“It would appear that the so-called ‘fringe minority’ is actually the government…Protesting in a Canadian winter shows real commitment!”

01/02/2022: Vitamin D supplements really do reduce the risk of auto-immune diseases: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2306132-vitamin-d-supplements-really-do-reduce-risk-of-autoimmune-disease/

31/01/2022: A Billion Years of Time is Just Missing – did they look under the sofa cushions: https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdzzb/a-billion-years-of-time-are-mysteriously-missing-scientists-think-they-know-why

31/01/2022: Astra Zenica Booster (if you don’t want a Pfizer/Moderna and can’t wait for Novavax): You can still get one if you get a certificate from your doctor. We have. It is (if anything) even more effective than the alternatives: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/astrazeneca-shot-third-dose-works-against-omicron-study-2021-12-23/?fbclid=IwAR17-sPdF_iZLr-eyp4deAoU5OmSb2w-owBiSph3FQ-RT5vCb16RvPu8zuQ

31/01/2022: We Are a young country: I have lived nearly a third of our country’s history (73/234 years). My grandfather George (b 1872) had lived half of its history to date when he died in 1955. He used to claim he had met someone who was on the First Fleet which may have been true (but he was a notorious story-teller). His grandfather Thomas Westbury who was transported here in 1828 would have. Also certainly Della’s mother, Dorothy who passed away in 2013 could rightly say that her grandmother had too. Her grandmother, Fannie was born in Tiverton Devon in 1844. She lived next door to her grandmother Mary (Madge) Richards (d1855) who was not only on the First Fleet (as a soldier’s wife) but gave birth to a son, William on the voyage out! You can understand perhaps why I am annoyed that (it seems to me) we are just throwing our country away – if we have not done so already.

30/01/2022: Ice Travel: Sometimes in winter on trails like the EBC etc there are dangerous patches of ice which need to be traversed. Obviously if you were expecting this as a constant situation you would be using more serious crampons. Vargo have just updated their ultralight pocket cleats (62 grams each) which can be quickly attached to your shoes for extra traction in such situations. They are now simpler, more elegant and look more reliable than their earlier product and with a weight saving of about 5 grams. Rea More: https://www.theultralighthiker.com/2022/01/27/ice-travel/

30/01/2022: Faraday Bag – What a world that we should need such things. Alas that we do: https://godarkbags.com/collections/faraday-bags/products/godark-faraday-bags-phone-small-bundle PS: Clearly if you are going to murder a couple of senior cits in the Wonnangatta you will need one of these!

30/01/2022: Ask yourself this (if you supposed there was some runaway ‘greenhouse effect’) how does the world maintain such a perfect constant average temperature (within 1C) for centuries? There simply has to be a (very good) thermostat: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/29/some-models-are-useless/

30/01/2022: Why waste a billion on a Reef which has never been bigger or better – so over woke ‘conservative’ governments: https://www.advanceaustralia.org.au/the_media_admits_peter_ridd_is_right_great_barrier_reef_coral_cover_is_at_a_record_high

30/01/2022: Maybe the truckies will succeed in ending the mandates: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/01/canadian-truckers-for-freedom-growing-fast-11-convoys-5m-one-convoy-said-to-be-150km-long/ Our truckies join in: https://www.rebelnews.com/australian_truck_drivers_join_the_convoy_for_freedom

28/01/2022: What is Vanguard (or whoever) up to in fomenting WW3 in Ukraine which has been part of the Russian Empire for centuries and where no doubt more than half the people would vote to rejoin if they had the choice? I also don’t really get why Russia would want to re-conquer the Ukraine which has become an economic basket case and which could only drag the Russian economy down (by approx 20%). Meanwhile Putin will simply turn the lights off to Europe (and now that the US is importing so much oil from Russia thanks to Biden closing Keystone & etc) he has that leverage too.

28/01/2022: Islamic extremism in decline? We can only hope so: https://quillette.com/2022/01/21/in-the-muslim-world-islamism-is-going-out-of-vogue/

28/01/2022: This level of tyranny is just dreadful: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/quebec-canada-bans-unvaxxed-buying-groceries-major-retailers-unless-accompanied-health-warden-will-ensure-buy-food-medicine/

27/01/2022: Why aren’t we using an Astra Zenica booster (if it is more effective): https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/astrazeneca-shot-third-dose-works-against-omicron-study-2021-12-23/?fbclid=IwAR17-sPdF_iZLr-eyp4deAoU5OmSb2w-owBiSph3FQ-RT5vCb16RvPu8zuQ

27/01/2022: Our BOM is totally out of control: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/26/australias-broken-temperature-record-part-1/ & https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/27/statistical-analysis-can-provide-evidence-that-the-official-australian-acornsat-2-1-temperature-analysis-has-added-non-climatic-warming-to-the-record-1910-to-2019/

27/01/2022: Paul Collitts suggests Tony Abbott for PM of the UK – why not Australia? The muppets we have on offer at present are woeful: https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/01/tony-abbott-for-pm-of-britain/

27/01/2022: About time we had a second Crimean War. We need more Australian place names memorialising such faraway places: Balaclava, Inkerman, Alma, Sevastopol etc.

26/01/2022: It begins at last– the undoing of a crooked election. Arizona will be next, then Georgia and Pennsylvania. Trump will be vindicated and returned as the elected President: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/huge-breaking-news-wisconsin-assembly-votes-withdraw-10-electors-joe-biden-2020-election-video/

26/01/2022: Terraforming the Sahara. An ambitious project. Thinking big can bring huge rewards. Remember Lang Hancock’s dream of a canal across the middle of Australia and the Bradfield Scheme: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/24/terraforming-the-northern-sahara-will-save-the-world/

26/01/2022: This just can’t be happening: The Criminalisation of Christianity in Finland: https://spectator.org/the-criminalization-of-christianity-in-finland/

26/01/2022: The ‘Aboriginal’ Flag. What is it with the government of Australia buying this piece of racist rubbish? Such objects have no more place in society than the Swastika and KKK symbols. There is but one race, the human race. To think otherwise is just dreadfully evil.

26/01/2022: How China bought the West. The Bidens are just a part of the story. We need to bring back hanging for treason: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/01/biden-family-gained-31m-in-deals-with-high-level-ccp-operatives/

25/01/2022: Just reading a recent speech by Putin . Seems like we would be picking the wrong side if we opposed his ideas. Do read: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/01/putin-on-the-wests-loss-of-values-in-the-quest-for-diversity-equity-and-inclusion.html PS: Does every Democrat President feel it is necessary to start a war? Surely the only beneficiary of such a war would be China which really needs to be curtailed!

25/01/2022: Freezing in EV’s. Great idea: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/01/ev-needs13-freezing-hours-to-get-650-km-with-3-charging-stops-and-no-heater/

25/01/2022: What happens when the tidal wave (of public opinion) turns? Neil Oliver is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZNmdDv48xE&t=564s

25/01/2022: Norway should stop wasting money on this monster. Put him down like any other mad dog: https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/norways-worst-mass-murderer-seeks-parole-from-his-cushy-confinement/

24/01/2022: Is It Still Australia? Jolly Swagman’s death is now recorded as COVID19 caused: https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2022/01/is-it-still-australia.html

24/01/2022: “The Assyrians came down like a wolf on the fold” (Byron). Might be worth a watch. They created a civilisation that makes Medieval Europe, 2000 years later, seem like a barbarian place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpAphcaVJIs

24/01/2022: How science actually works – a great article Christopher: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/science/2022/01/the-curse-of-scientisms-domining-paradigm/

24/01/2022: Archaeological evidence of time travel – there are some interesting conundrums/mistakes/frauds in the records, like these: https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/controversial-origins-maine-penny-norse-coin-america-020241 & https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/swiss-ring-watch-003312

23/01/2022: Thousands still protesting vaccine mandates in Melbourne – and rightly so too. What lunacy allows covid positive asymptomatic vaccinated people to work but bans the disease free unvaccinated who are likely immune and less risk anyway? https://www.rebelnews.com/australian_closed_thousands_march_for_freedom_in_melbourne

23/01/2022:

23/01/2022: The most astonishing thing about ‘trust the science’: The British Medical Journal “Today, despite the global rollout of covid-19 vaccines and treatments, the anonymised participant level data underlying the trials for these new products remain inaccessible to doctors, researchers, and the public—and are likely to remain that way for years to come. This is morally indefensible for all trials, but especially for those involving major public health interventions.” https://joannenova.com.au/2022/01/top-british-medical-journal-tells-pfizer-give-us-the-data-its-morally-indefensible/ It is not a ‘conspiracy theory’ to question: https://the-pipeline.org/something-wicked-really-does-this-way-come/

23/01/2022: Why not? Michigan school put litter boxes in the bathroom for students that ‘identify as cats’: https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/michigan-school-put-litter-boxes-in-the-bathroom-for-students-that-identify-as-cats/

22/01/2022: Our political class today – the advanced ostrich position:

22/01/2022: Trump was right about hydroxychloroquine – of course this might be why Merck’s new treatment (approved by the TGA yesterday is basically just relabeled hydroxy): https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/dr-zelenko-gets-the-last-laugh/

22/01/2022: Clearly, the cheapest way to stop global warming would be to sack everyone at the BOM : https://joannenova.com.au/2022/01/bom-cools-history-and-warms-the-present-version-2-2/

22/01/2022: If you are a retired teacher who still has nightmares about having to face 9d at 9:00 am this morning your dreams are about to come true: https://www.heraldsun.com.au/education-victoria/retired-teachers-called-to-cover-as-covid-hits-victorias-schools/news-story/dace3b9d5b39244bf37c04d58975dc33

21/01/2022: Gun owners annually save more lives than are lost to any disease. This does not happen in Australia where their use for self-defence is banned. At the time I reflected eg how long would Man Monis have lasted if some people in the Lindt Café were armed? https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/the-too-often-untold-story-armed-self-defense-and-the-lives-saved-every-year-by-gun-owners/

21/01/2022: Goebells was right after all. Keep telling lies and the people will believe you. A US poll shows Democrats want covid skeptics locked up and their children taken away from them: https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/shock-poll-half-of-democrats-want-covid-skeptics-in-prison/

21/01/2022: “We live in an age that makes truth pass for treason, and as I dare not say anything against it, so the ears of those that are about me will probably be found too tender to hear it. This my trial and condemnation do sufficiently evidence." Few know that Jefferson mentioned Sidney as a source and/or inspiration for the Declaration of Independence. It can hardly be more true today, as "credible" news sources spread lies masquerading as truth based on nothing other than these sources own claim that they, themselves, are "credible." Credibility is in the information, not the source - and we have precious few truly credible sources of news today. https://fee.org/articles/algernon-sidney-forgotten-founding-father/ Rally for freedom on January 22: https://australiafreedomrally.com/

PS: Sidney was a supporter of the Roundheads during the English Civil War, and a member of the Long Parliament. Despite his opposition to the king and support for the forces opposing him, Cromwell found it necessary to have Sidney removed, as Sidney had become critical of Cromwell's authoritarian nature. His refusal to leave his seat led to Cromwell ordering the parliamentarians removal and Sidney fled England.

21/01/2022: Tucker: We’re watching civilization collapse in real time. If you are attention span short go to about the 15 minute mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DREmnsungVM&t=122s

20/01/2022: This is what really happened when a group of schoolboys was marooned on an island for 15 months. Why do we focus on Golding’s quite false ‘Lord of the Flies’ narrative instead: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months

20/01/2022:

20/01/2022: 4^th Booster fails in Israel. Israel has shattered all of their previous case records, despite mask mandates, vaccine passports and rolling out a 4th dose: https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/4th-booster-fails-in-israel-check-the-chart/

20/01/2022: It is apparently very lonely ruling the world. Frankly when they ‘fact-check my posts or downgrade my Google rankings (& etc) they don’t get much sympathy from me: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/01/workers-at-big-woke-tech-monopolies-are-miserable/

19/01/2022: Flying Deer? Why you need really tall fences for deer: https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/michael-jordan-has-nothing-on-this-flying-deer/ Mind you I suspect I could move much faster if a big cat was after me too!

19/01/2022: Hunting has been around a long, long time yet some ‘New Age’ folk want to tell me they have discovered it isn’t a good. They are quite simply wrong. Ethics don’t change: https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/ancient-hunters-0016305

19/01/2022: We would have done much better if we had followed El Salvador’s lead: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/01/if-only-our-covid-healthcare-was-as-good-as-el-salvador/ Or Uttar Pradesh’s (where they have eliminated it (without vaccine – thanks Ivermectin + Zinc): https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/dr-robert-malone-posts-irrefutable-proof-ivermectin-uttar-pradesh-india-success-story/ We could have spent $100 per capita instead of hundreds of thusands! I have been saying this since way back around Xmas 2019!

19/01/2022:

18/01/2022: The Joy of Small Streams: This is the Morwell River somewhere neither you nor I (probably) ever thought to canoe. I present it here as an example: The great adventures are mostly over. People have crossed all the continents and seas, plumbed the deepest depths and ascended the tallest mountains – but they haven’t been everywhere. There is oft surprisingly a largely unexplored wilderness right next door which will reveal many delights if you ‘take the road less traveled’ or preferably no road at all, as I prefer to do.

A couple of earlier posts such as Travels in a Donkey Trap & The Commute may illustrate this better.

You will have read that Della has a new Alpacka Scout which we are keen to try out, but it is difficult to do much with this knee (agonising) as it presently is. Less than a month to go and I will have a new one, and hopefully a new lease of life to go with it – but there will be quite a few weeks of recuperation and restoration I’m sure before I travel far and wide.

The Morwell River is a very small river which rises behind the village of Boolarra in Sth Gippsland. The canoeable section (paralleling the River Rd) is (roughly) from the East Branch confluence (bridge) down to Fox and Fanke’s Road – though you can go down to the next bridge (a private driveway – luckily owned by a couple of friends of mine!)

This trip will take about three hours when the river is clear and will be just beautiful at river heights on the Boolarra Gauge of between .5 and .6 metres. Read More: https://www.theultralighthiker.com/2022/01/17/the-joy-of-small-streams/

18/01/2022: So, panspermia is a thing – maybe all life on earth is alien in origin? The corollary anyway is that life from here will have colonized many other places by now: https://phys.org/news/2022-01-vertical-bacteria-altitude-120km.html

18/01/2022: What do you see when you actually measure ‘anthropogenic CO2: “Our results show that the percentage of the total CO₂ due to the use of fossil fuels from 1750 to 2018 increased from 0% in 1750 to 12% in 2018, much too low to be the cause of global warming.” https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/16/how-much-manmade-co2-is-in-the-atmosphere-really/

18/01/2022: ‘The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.’ Ian Kerhsaw.

17/01/2022: A Good Scout: This is the Alpacka Scout which I bought for my wife Della (or was it for myself?) for a Xmas present – here modeled by my daughter and grandson in the farm dam.

Pack Raft Australia are the Australian agents. Their prices are as low as you could possible get it from the US anyway but the rafts will arrive in less than a week. They also have lots of spares and accessories – and also stock Hyperlite Mountain Gear. I highly recommend them.

My daughter (and my wife are around 5′ and 40 kg sort of people. This raft (at 1.5 kg) is ideal for them. Read More: https://www.theultralighthiker.com/2022/01/17/a-good-scout/

17/01/2022: “When the people are afraid of the government, that's tyranny. But when the government is afraid of the people, that's liberty”. Thomas Jefferson.

17/01/2022: Trump can still draw the crowds like no other – what sane person can believe that this man did not win the US election? It shocks me to the core that the world’s greatest democracy has been overthrown by massive corruption backed by the CCP. I still hope that this awful evil will be undone without civil war: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/wow-419000-viewers-tune-watch-trump-florence-rally-rsbn-rumble-youtube-gettr-channels-live/

17/01/2022: “The Chinese regime has taken to heart the Leninist slogan,“The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” Important messages from Ronald Reagan the greatest US president to date: https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/14/quiet-men-and-bamboo-cages/

17/01/2022: The world’s greatest tennis player is not allowed to win the Australian Open because of his beliefs even though he is zero risk of causing any health problems amongst us as we record 100,000+ new cases per day and he is ‘recovered’ status anyway. I’m sure you all know that I have no interest at all in spectator sport but I am passionate about our freedoms. I am quite frankly ashamed by this stupid, illiberal decision.

16/01/2022: Are 3D printed rockets the future of space exploration: https://www.space.com/relativity-space-company-terran-1-launch

16/01/2022: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years...When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education...the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint...It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold...they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters." Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59)

16/01/2022: Epstein-Barr – another nasty virus: https://scitechdaily.com/compelling-evidence-that-multiple-sclerosis-is-caused-by-epstein-barr-virus/

16/01/2022: AI news reader has been live for 70 days and no-one noticed the difference. I suspect this has happened with many of our political leaders too: https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/china-reveals-ai-news-anchor-almost-indistinguishable-real-human

15/01/2022: It’s impossible to ‘save a life’. I for one am fed up with the hype that always surrounds all the ‘nanny-state’ nonsense which goes with all sorts of attempts to do so. Everyone has exactly the same numbers of lives and deaths, ie one. Nothing, save the discovery of the secret of immortality can change that. However, though the date of your birth is petty much fixed, the date of your death may not be. I’m sure we have all had close shaves. Death cannot be indefinitely postponed however. All that can happen is that we can be granted a little more time – mostly this is spent slumped in a wheelchair pooping oneself! So not much to be gained really. A more reliable measure is to add up the relative savings in (life) times that any particular proposal might make as compared with the cost in (life) times that it will entail. For example, it is sometimes argued that reducing the speed on a particular road will ‘save’ a certain number of lives. All that can (possibly) be ‘saved’ is the remainder of any particular ‘victim’s’ life which was foregone by his/her earlier than expected demise. Set against that quantum of time you have to count the ‘cost’ in time of slowing down all the drivers on that road - possibly several (life) times per year here - and the cost in time of caring for the geriatric period of the person who had died ‘prematurely’. If the second set of ‘times’ exceeds the first then the proposal is not worth doing. Everyone’s life is equally worthless or worthwhile in this cost accounting, which may not be the case!

15/01/2022: What the other epidemiologists (60,000 of them) say: https://swprs.org/professor-ehud-qimron-ministry-of-health-its-time-to-admit-failure/

15/01/2022: Maybe if we gave up washing our skin could take care of itself: https://slate.com/technology/2022/01/skincare-science-cleansing-dermatology-truth.html

15/01/2022: Will space anaemia strand us on earth forever or will a solution be found for future star trekkers: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/01/we-dont-know-why-but-being-in-space-causes-us-to-destroy-our-blood/

14/01/2022: Buster Keaton was the funniest man ever, as you can see in this clip from his 100 year old movie ‘Cops’ (1920): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz1_zJngNak&t=366s You can download the complete film for free from archive.org

14/01/2022: This is really bad news: US inflation has hit 7% https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/01/inflation-went-up-7-in-december-from-a-year-earlier-fastest-pace-since-1982/ 80% of all US dollars were printed in the last 22 months: https://www.advanceaustralia.org.au/inflation_is_here_80_per_cent_of_all_us_dollars_were_printed_in_the_last_22_months What could go wrong? Weimar. That’s what.

14/01/2022:

14/01/2022: Now both the EU and the WHO warn against taking continual ‘booster’ shots on the grounds that it may permanently damage your immune system – and of course they don’t work either: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/frightening-joins-eu-changes-direction-suddenly-warns-taking-continued-covid-booster-shots/

Meanwhile cannabis and licorice are the new covid cures: https://scitechdaily.com/cannabinoids-from-hemp-prevent-covid-19-coronavirus-from-entering-human-cells/

13/01/2022: Interesting. The lost habit of two sleeps – so many everyday things scarcely make it into history. If you have ‘problems’ sleeping, you should read this: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medieval-habit-of-biphasic-sleep

13/01/2022: The Redneck Guide to Children’s Rights – some interesting insights here: https://cbradleythompson.substack.com/p/the-redneck-guide-to-childrens-rights

13/01/2022: Our shameful climate alarmists just keep inventing new climate records whilst ignoring the reality that the world has been cooling now for 8,000 years and will continue to do so until we enter the next Ice Age for circa 100,000 years. That would be a big story: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/01/magical-seven-year-record-wins-the-hottest-ever-bingo-of-2021/

13/01/2022: If this is authenticated (likely) it is an absolute bombshell and reveals awful evil at the highest level: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/premeditated-manslaughter-millions-people-coordinated-highest-levels-naomi-wolf-dr-malone-respond-project-veritas-bombshell-video/

12/01/2022: A surfing swimming cat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vBUxmWeoc0

12/01/2022: This new robot is spooky – time to put a stop to this? https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/dont-let-this-humanoid-robot-within-100-feet/

12/01/2022: Meanwhile it looks like China has been tinkering with bioweapons again but this one is far worse with maybe a 50% fatality rate. Shut the door to this yesterday Scott.: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/dr-malone-mentions-possible-outbreak-china-ebola-like-hemorrhagic-fever-virus-marburg-virus-50-survival-rate/

11/01/2022: “I see thy glory like a shooting star.” Richard 2. There really are ‘shooting stars’: https://www.popsci.com/space/real-shooting-stars-look-a-lot-different-than-youd-expect/

11/01/2022: Does this mean we have to say, ‘Goodbye’ to the Bussard Ramjet: https://scitechdaily.com/science-fiction-revisited-ramjet-propulsion-for-interstellar-space-travel/

11/01/2022: I realized the vaccines had problems but I did not realize they were this bad: “Instead of bringing an end to this pandemic as promised, the widespread rollout of the experimental vaccines has actually caused a sharp increase in Covid-19 cases and deaths across the world, the jab has caused a whopping 38% more Covid cases per million – and an even more astonishing 31% increase in deaths per million”. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/massive-145-country-study-shows-sharp-increase-transmission-death-introduction-covid-vaccines/

Meanwhile Ivermectin even at very low doses saves a huge (70%) percentage of sufferers: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/01/bizarrely-low-dose-ivermectin-still-cut-infections-hospitalization-in-half-deaths-by-70/

11/01/2022: We must reject the racist apartheid politics of the anti-Australia Day crowd. We are all Australians who belong only to the one (human) race. That is all: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/aborigines/2022/01/the-violent-politics-of-australia-day/

10/01/2022: A good news story about a baby hummingbird: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9MxTo1W2PY&t=224s

10/01/2022: Slow-Mo Supernova: https://www.sciencealert.com/for-the-first-time-we-ve-seen-a-red-giant-star-transition-into-a-supernova

10/01/2022: James Webb out at L2 which we might colonise one day bit until then e will never see this amazing piece of technology again but (hopefully)it shows us a universe we could otherwise only have dreamed of: https://www.sciencealert.com/enjoy-ariane-5-s-last-view-of-webb-as-it-sails-off-into-deep-space

10/01/2022: Dispelling Progressive Fantasies About a World Without Guns: https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/first-do-no-harm-dispelling-progressive-fantasies-about-a-world-without-guns/

09/01/2022: Shameful: Is it any wonder that there are 7 dead and 32 injured when clearly everyone fled instead of rushing to help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pcsVi2y83w

09/01/2022: The immense bravery which still exists despite decades of theocratic totalitarianism inspires me. One should not forget that ‘the ‘Western Civilisation’ of which we are so justifiable proud (I hope) actually stands on the shoulders of an Arab civilisation which preserved it for close to a thousand years when it was thrown away into barbarism in that very West. ‘Algebra’ for example isn’t just called that by accident. Alas that ‘Arab Civilization’ has itself largely descended into barbarism: https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/01/iranians-set-fire-to-soleimanis-statue-hours-after-unveiling/

09/01/2022: Why humans suck at thinking. I must because I still think the real answer to the Monty Hall problem is ½: https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/gamblers-fallacy-and-the-regression-to-the-mean/

09/01/2022: You have to hope this does not come to pass: “Are we headed for the situation where the ~30% unvaxxed will be devoting their lives to operating whatever is left of the economic infrastructure and serving as caretakers for the vaxxed? in the USA, where ~200M people have been fully inoculated, the number of deaths will not be the 10,000 or so reported in VAERS, or the 150,000+ scaled-up deaths from VAERS, but could be closer to tens of millions when the inoculation effects play out! https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/bhakdiburkhardt-pathology-results

09/01/2022: Stuart Schneiderman is always refreshing. “When government fails the movement toward populism accelerates. And it tends toward conspiracy theories, because who would possibly believe that the people who are running government are just plain stupid. In truth, it's easier to deal with evil than it is to deal with stupid…A lot more of this may be on the way if the developed world keeps playing Russian roulette with its energy supply, a vital underpinning of a modern society and foundation of every voter’s well-being” http://stuartschneiderman.blogspot.com/2022/01/climate-change-sanity.html

08/01/2022: Blame the hedgehogs: https://www.sciencealert.com/origins-of-drug-resistant-superbug-weren-t-what-we-thought-surprise-discovery-shows

08/01/2022: Long past time politicians (and others) focused on things that actually matter. Tucker’s opening statement is worth a watch : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ka7zKnzEfs

08/01/2022: Protecting the grid (rather than forcing it to collapse) is a case in point: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/01/deaths-from-1-degree-of-warming-nothing-compared-to-an-electricity-grid-collapse-for-a-year/

08/01/2022: January 6 Remembered – It’s only when conservatives do it (and do no harm) that it matters: https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/07/8-times-left-wing-protesters-broke-into-government-buildings-and-assaulted-democracy/

07/01/2022: Virtue signalling is all very well but not if it costs me a single buck: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/01/its-just-a-fashion-most-climate-worriers-dont-want-to-fly-less-drive-less-or-eat-less-meat-either/

07/01/2022: Viagra — is there anything it can't do? https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/01/viagrais_there_anything_it_cant_do.html

07/01/2022: How things work –unfortunately: https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/errors-forced-and-otherwise

07/01/2022: China has sustained a fusion reaction for 17 minutes. The race is on. Cheap safe fusion power is just around the corner. We can stop fretting about carbon and renewables. Nuclear is the way forward: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/01/developing-nation-china-makes-artificial-sun-nuclear-fusion-at-70-million-degrees-for-17-minutes/

06/01/2022: We must ‘follow the science’: scientists teach fish to drive: https://wonderfulengineering.com/this-robotic-aquarium-allows-fish-to-drive-around-on-roads/

06/01/2022: “They have suppressed many safe, useful treatments: People deficient in Vitamin D3 are 14 times more likely to get severe Covid. Why aren’t the Health Departments telling us all to get our D3 measured and why don’t they hand out free samples at every corner chemist? Vit D3 reduced hospital deaths in Turkey by 60%. Most of the sickest Covid patients in Spain were deficient in Vit A. And 42% were deficient in B6, which helps reduce cytokine storms. Think that’s an “accident”?

Melatonin reduces deaths by maybe 90%, good old antihistamines saved nursing home patients, Iota-carageenan nasal sprays reduced infections by 80%, Mouthwashes reduce covid deaths by 80%. Asthma drug Budesonide reduces Covid hospitalization rate by 90%. Even cough syrup with Bromhexine might help.

Indonesia cut Covid by 98% with Ivermectin while Australia grew cases 500% with Lock-n-Vax, Uttar Pradesh, India, wiped out Covid with ivermectin. In Peru, Ivermectin cut covid deaths by 75% in 6 weeks. The virus mysteriously disappeared in Japan. Can’t we copy them? Meanwhile countries that use hydroxychloroquine appear to have 80% lower Covid death rates. Maybe that matters. If the Health Dept cared about health, if hospitalization rates were important at all, they’d be acting differently” https://joannenova.com.au/2022/01/why-suppress-early-safe-treatments-for-covid-heres-24-billion-reasons/

06/01/2022: A must read – mass formation psychosis explained: https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/opinion/opinion-how-have-we-gotten-here-mass-formation-psychosis-explained/

06/01/2022: How the 1960s institutionalized us. Roger Kimball is great. “The long march of the cultural revolution of the 1960s has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of all but the most starry-eyed utopians. The great irony is that this victory took place in the midst of a significant drift to the center-right in electoral politics. The startling and depressing fact is that supposedly conservative victories at the polls have done almost nothing to challenge the dominance of left-wing, emancipationist attitudes and ideas in our culture… It is both ironical and dispiriting to realize that the counterculture may have won its most insidious victories not among its natural sympathizers on the left but among those putatively conservative opponents who can no longer distinguish between material affluence and the moral good…” https://spectatorworld.com/topic/institutionalized-long-march-marcuse-sixties-revolution/

05/01/2022: Terraforming Mars – I used to think it was only Sci-Fi but maybe someday it will happen (especially if Musk has anything to do with it): https://dnyuz.com/2022/01/02/nasas-retiring-top-scientist-says-we-can-terraform-mars-and-maybe-venus-too/

05/01/2022: Another Elon Musk first: https://nypost.com/2022/01/03/why-cats-are-cozying-up-to-elon-musks-starlink-satellites/

05/01/2022: What is happening here? A 40% increase in the death rates of working age people would have to be very worrying: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/highest-death-rates-history-indiana-life-insurance-ceo-says-deaths-whopping-40-among-people-aged-18-64-2020-fraction-covid-deaths-video/

05/01/2022: French Presidential candidate Eric Zemmour’s Christmas message. He would get my vote. If only our Oz leaders had half his belief in the worth of our civilisation instead of being so eager to throw it away. “Christmas Eve begins the celebration of a civilization – ours – that has enlightened human history. A civilization that believes man is absolutely free, whatever his birth, his past, his environment, his path. In the Christian world, liberty has a divine nature and must be protected as the most precious treasure. A civilization that believes men are equal in dignity…: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/society/2022/01/a-belated-christmas-message-from-eric-zemmour/

04/01/2022: Increasing Tyranny World-Wide. Just a couple of ‘incidents’ to underline this. Once the ABC’s 7:30 report or the Herald Sun (the mainstream media generally) would have headlined such things but they are now complicit in concealing the news (and the deteriorating situation). Dr Malone (the inventor of the mRNA process which underlines some vaccines (he actually specifically warns against) gave an interview the other day explaining the phenomenon of ‘mass formation psychosis’ (mas hysteria) and its role in advancing totalitarianism. This search term ‘broke’ Google for over 24 hours as the people behind the manipulation of information scrambled (unsuccessfully this time) to cover it up. You could find out about this at ‘Infowars’ for example (and many other sites) but I would not be able to post links to them without being banned permanently from Facebook & etc. In a like way Tommy Robinson has just completed a documentary about UK child rape gangs entitled ‘The Rape of Britain’. As you can see he has had his car fire-bombed today. I fear he will be killed. He has also had to organize (huge) teams of volunteer (dads) to protect the witnesses he interviewed from the criminals who carried out these rapes (who are protected by the police and MPs!) You have already seen how the US election was (hugely) stolen so that (de facto) democracy has all but disappeared from the world. These are dark days my friends. I hope to live to see the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, but we may not - for even a millennium. Such has been the case in the past. Be warned and be vigilant: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/breaking-tommy-robinsons-car-firebombed-release-documentary-trailer-grooming-gangs-video/

Check out the follow-up to these ‘incidents’ here: https://t.me/s/TommyRobinsonNews Not so long ago we would have (rightly) insisted that perpetrators of child (any) rape would be hanged from the nearest tree. Now the police (society?) has become complicit in such awful crimes.

04/01/2022: This is normal: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/01/new-annual-temperature-data-show-no-warming-in-tokyo-in-45-yearshachijo-jima-island-no-warming-in-71-years/ You can check the BOM temperature records at our longest most remote Oz sites (eg Cape Otway and Wilsons Prom) yourself to see that temperatures actually declined during the C20th and that all the highest temperature records actually occurred in the C19th. If you are too lazy to do so you are not ‘entitled’ to an alternative opinion. That being said however I see that the BOM has been hiding the data and will no longer respond to a search for these station names. Here is a list of the station numbers: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/ca_vic_names.shtml The data can still be found. Here it is: http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=36&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_stn_num=090015 More instructions can be found here: http://www.finnsheep.com/CLIMATE%20CHANGE-%20CARBON%20SCAM.htm

04/01/2022: Life will find a way – for thousands of bugs ‘plastic pollution is just food. They will soon have gobbled it all up. Like so many things, not a problem: https://joannenova.com.au/2022/01/plastics-are-not-forever-bugs-evolved-30000-new-plastic-eating-enzymes-already/

04/01/2022: Abortion was the world’s leading cause of death last year (by a long shot). Over 40 million! For comparison World War 1 killed around 20 million, World War 2 perhaps 60 million but each was over a period of several years. This is homicide on a grand scale, not advanced health care. For most of my long life we have had safe cheap contraception and have been able to ‘plan’ our families and enjoy our (sex) lives. I understand that the ‘parents’ of these aborted babies do not want them (any more than murderers generally want their victims to live). There are more than sufficient other people who do want these babies though – and one might have thought the babies themselves ought have a stake in this, ie what once was called a ‘right’ to life? For most of us it is a wonderful boon after all. In most countries there is a drastic declining population and a shortage of workers which will cause all sorts of problems in the future. Making sure that these ‘unwanted’ babies have a loving home and a rewarding future instead of death would go a long way to solving both these problems as well as help to confirm our humanity. https://www.worldometers.info/abortions/

03/01/2022: And Now For the Good News: Dear IPCC, First get the science right…If you have a great big hole in the roof it will be impossible to heat your house…if all the heat ‘leaks’ out over Antarctica for example, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about or to be done about it. (PS: For me at least ‘advection’ is a new word – joy!): https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/02/advection/

03/01/2022: Canoeing into the New Year: There was 2.05 metres of lovely water on the Waterford gauge and 1.60 on the Crooked River gauge and several above 30C degree days to look forward to so we filled the 15 litre Esky keg with ice (and some celebratory cans of champagne for Della) tossed all our gear into two cars and headed off (of course with the two dogs) to Eaglevale intending to canoe down to Kingwill Bridge over a (very) leisurely three days. This is an excellent height but we enjoyed the trip before with only 1.75 on the Waterford gauge.

It is (roughly 2.5 hours down to Bullock Flat then a further 2.5 hours down to (unsignposted) Neates Track thence a further 3 hours down to the Kingwill Bridge. There are several other intermediate camping spots where you can enter or exit the river, some of them so well concealed that no-one at all was there even though both at Eaglevale and Kingwill Bridge folks were pretty much ‘cheek and jowl’ having at long last escaped the covid tyranny for a brief respite.

This trip could be achieved in one (hectic) day if you were of such a mind or you could take your time, enjoy lots of refreshing swims, picnics under shady trees and etc and just take your time. ‘There is nothing quite like messing about in boats’ as Ratty (or Mole) opined in ‘Wind in the Willows’. Read More: https://www.theultralighthiker.com/2022/01/02/canoeing-into-the-new-year/

03/01/2022: Three inches of rain coming but the BOM is still calling it ‘Showers’!

03/01/2022: The Perfect Husband? Well, probably not but I am a hero today having fixed Della’s (long-suffering) stove problem. Several years’ ago I installed a new Westinghouse GSP 627S gas stove for her. After a short while the door started to give problems and would not close properly. Repeated efforts to gain warranty failed as did various jack-leg work arounds so that we mainly reverted to propping the door ‘closed’ with a short length of broom handle or similar. Lately I decided to have another go and discovered this wonderful lady’s ‘review’ of her own experiences. https://www.productreview.com.au/listings/westinghouse-gsp627s This led me to the people who sell the improved door support bracket (https://allfixelectrical.com.au/products/westinghouse-4u600-series-improved-oven-door-hinge-support-bracket-kit-part-0133002227k?_pos=2&_sid=e0b4fc722&_ss=r – a whole $21!) It really took no more than five minutes to install them and now (after many years) the door closes perfectly – much more perfectly than it did from new. Della will now have to master a whole new set of cooking times and there will be huge savings no doubt on our gas bill. There (sometimes) is progress after all!

02/01/2022: Happy New Year: We have been away from people canoeing – more about that in a later post. Occasionally coming upon the (literally) hordes of benighted campers confined to ‘camping grounds’ along the river whilst we enjoyed mile after mile of solitary bliss led us to reflect that (at now over 70 – me) we have enjoyed the best of all lives, and we are still doing so. Those who come after have very much less to look forward to largely because of the proliferation of government and other big controlling entities. Still there is even more wilderness to enjoy than there ever was. The world has added an area of a couple of Australias of forest in just the last quarter century or so for example, and as people crowd more and more into urban areas and access roads and tracks are closed the bush is more and more thinly populated. It is really no use buying one of the Thai 4WD dual cabs. The only way to access the bush is by canoe or shanks’ pony. Get out there and enjoy before it is banned too.

02/01/2022: Great lines from old films. The 1930s was a golden era. Mae West stands out even there. Here is one from ‘Dinner at 8’. I doubt cinematographers would be allowed to go even this far today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2tCDHgK9J4&t=28s

02/01/2022: It has been raining fish in Texas. Such weird events as Charles Hoy Fort documented long ago do reignite his speculation that we ourselves are ‘fished for’ by aliens. Certainly our governments are encouraging us to become more and more credulous under the constant refrain, ‘Trust the science’ or ‘Trust us’ for short. But why would you ever? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99h3rsslmYg&feature=emb_title

02/01/2022: Inflation. ‘Nothing to see here’ is the standard government lie, but all along they devalue the currency again and again with this device, punishing savers and rewarding the profligate. The result for most of us is that we become relatively poorer whilst ‘enjoying’ a larger and larger swag of government of all sorts. This is disguised by many people having heaps of cheap Chinese toys to play with (funded by our only profitable industry - primary) and increasing debt mountains. The whole world has rapidly become Argentina or Greece. Technically or really insolvent. https://joannenova.com.au/2022/01/2022-the-year-of-inflation/

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